BL    51    .J66    1922 

ATaUu^Tr    "52-1922. 
A  faith  that   enquires 


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A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 


THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

NEW  YORK    •    BOSTON    •    CHICAGO    •    DALLAS 
ATLANTA    •    SAN  FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON    •     HOMBAY    •    CALCUTTA 
M£LBOURNS 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OP  CANADA,  Lto. 

TOkONTO 


A  FAITH 
THAT  ENQUIRES 


THE  GIFFORD  LECTURES 

DELIVERED  IN   THE   UNIVERSITY   OF   GLASGOW 
IN  THE  YEARS  1920  AND  1921 


BY  y^ 

SIR  HENRY  JONES 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1922 

All  rights  reserved 


PREFACE 

I  HAVE  had  one  main  purpose  before  me  throughout  this  course 
of  lectures.  It  is  that  of  awakening  and  fostering  the  spirit  of 
research  in  questions  of  religious  faith. 

If  I  read  our  times  aright,  there  are  many  thousands  of 
thoughtful  men  in  this  country  whose  interest  in  religion  is  sin- 
cere, but  who  can  neither  accept  the  ordinary  teaching  of  the 
Church,  nor  subject  themselves  to  its  dogmatic  ways.  I  would 
fain  demonstrate  to  these  men,  both  by  example  and  by  precept, 
that  the  enquiry  which  makes  the  fullest  use  of  the  severe  intel- 
lectual methods,  supports  those  beliefs  upon  which  a  religion 
that  is  worth  having  rests.  Let  man  seek  God  by  the  way  of 
pure  reason,  and  he  will  find  him. 

As  to  the  Churches,  I  could  wish  them  no  better  fate  than  that 
henceforth  they  shall  regard  the  articles  of  their  creeds,  not  as 
authoritative  dogmas,  but  as  objects  of  unsparing  intellectual 
enquiry.  Enquiry  not  only  establishes  the  truth  of  the  main 
elements  of  the  doctrines  which  the  Churches  inculcate,  it  trans- 
mutes and  enriches  their  meaning.  Enquiry  is  the  way  of  Evo- 
lution; His  "Kingdom  will  come"  pari  passu  with  the  develop- 
ment of  the  more  secular  forces  on  which  the  well-being  of  man- 
kind depends.  And,  I  believe,  that  our  spiritual  knowledge  and 
practice,  both  individual  and  social,  is  so  crude  and  rudimentary 
that  we  cannot  even  imagine  the  splendour  of  the  results  which 
an  enquiring  religious  faith  can  bring  to  man. 

I  hope  that  the  Church  will  accept  my  service  of  its  greater 
ends  in  the  spirit  in  which  it  is  offered. 

vii 


viii  PREFACE 

I  have  received  from  Principal  Hetherington,  of  Exeter  Uni- 
versity College,  and  from  Mr.  Knox  White,  Mr.  Alexander 
Macbeath  and  Mr.  Idris  Phillips  a  most  valuable  help  in  the 
way  of  the  correction  of  proofs,  and  take  this  opportunity  of 
expressing  my  indebtedness  to  them.  And  I  wish  especially  to 
thank  Professor  Kemp  Smith,  of  the  University  of  Edinburgh, 
for  the  minuteness  and  fulness  of  his  helpful  care.  It  is  the 
expression  of  the  affection  of  the  earliest  of  my  pupils,  who  has 
attained  philosophical  eminence. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

LECTURE  I 
The  Value  and  Need  of  Free  Enquiry  in  Religion        1 

LECTURE  II 
The  Sceptical  Objections  to  Enquiry  in  Religion 

Stated  and  Examined 13 

LECTURE  III 
The  Nature  of  Religion 24 

LECTURE  IV 

The  Contrast  of  the  Finite  and  Infinite     .       .       36 

LECTURE  V 
The  Way  We  Know 48 

LECTURE  VI 
Scientific  Hypothesis  and  Religious  Faith     .       .       61 

LECTURE  VII 
Religious  Life  and  Religious  Theory      ...       82 

LECTURE  VIII 
Morality  and  Religion 94 

LECTURE  IX 
Morality  and  Religion  .       .       .       .       .       .103 

ix 


X  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

LECTURE  X 
Morality  A  Process  THAT  Always  Attains       .       .118 

LECTURE  XI 
The  World  of  the  Individualist        ....     135 

LECTURE  XII 
The  World  of  the  Idealist 150 

LECTURE  XIII 
The  Standard  of  Value 165 

LECTURE  XIV 

The  Perfect  as  Spiritual  Process     .       .        .       .181 

LECTURE  XV 

The  Absolute  and  the  Natural  World  .        .        .     197 

LECTURE  XVI 
God  and  Man's  Freedom 214 

LECTURE  XVII 
Contingencies 228 

LECTURE  XVIII 
God  and  the  Absolute 242 

LECTURE  XIX 
The  Immortality  of  the  Soul 257 

LECTURE  XX 
The  Results  of  Our  Enquiry 269 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 


LECTURE  I 

THE  VALUE  AND   NEED  OF   FREE   ENQUIRY  IN  RELIGION 

Nearly  thirty  years  ago  I  was  entrusted  by  this  University 
with  the  office  vacated  by  a  very  great  teacher,  one  of  the  great- 
est teachers  of  philosophy  given  to  the  world  in  modern  times. 
The  burden  of  the  trust  was  almost  beyond  bearing;  for  the 
daily  life  of  Edward  Caird  was  even  more  flawless  in  its  wis- 
dom and  peace  than  his  doctrine.  But,  as  usual,  the  respon- 
sibilities of  the  office  were  also  an  inspiration,  and  its  duties  have 
been  a  continuous  privilege.  I  have  for  a  long  time  been 
grateful  for  them,  and  recognized  that  I  can  repay  the  Uni- 
versity neither  for  my  life-task  as  a  teacher  nor  for  my  nur- 
ture as  a  student. 

And  to-day  my  debt  is  deepened  further  still.  My  colleagues, 
moved  by  their  kindliness  and  judging  most  gently,  have  given 
me  a  new  opportunity  of  being  of  use.  They  have  placed  in 
my  hands,  for  helpful  treatment  if  I  can,  a  theme  which  every 
thoughtful  man  knows  to  have  an  interest  that  is  at  once  uni- 
versal and  intensely  personal,  and  a  significance,  both  specula- 
tive and  practical,  which  the  wise  observer  of  human  history 
would  hesitate  to  limit.  I  think  I  may  say  that  to  justify  their 
trust  in  some  measure  were  the  crowning  happiness  of  my  life. 

The  Gifford  Lecturer  is  expressly  relieved  of  the  necessity  of 
"making  any  promise  of  any  kind."  I  make  none — not  even  to 
do  my  best;  for  I  might  fall  short  of  that  also.  But  the 
Founder  of  the  Lectureship  expressed  one  wish  which  was  evi- 


2  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

dently  deep  in  his  spirit,  and  made  one  injunction  which  he 
rightly  expected  to  be  followed.  "I  wish  the  lecturers,"  he 
said,  "to  treat  their  subject  as  a  strictly  natural  science  .  .  . 
without  reference  to  or  reliance  upon  any  supposed  special  ex- 
ceptional or  so-called  miraculous  revelation.  I  wish  it  consid- 
ered just  as  astronomy  or  chemistry  is."  Then  he  enjoins  that 
the  lectures  "shall  be  public  and  popular  ...  as  I  think  that 
the  subject  should  be  studied  and  known  by  all  ...  I  think  such 
knowledge,  if  real,  lies  at  the  root  of  all  well-being." 

Lord  Gifford's  aim  was  thus  thoroughly  and  directly  prac- 
tical. He  desired  free  discussion  with  a  view  to  the  knowledge 
of  the  truth,  and  he  desired  knowledge  of  the  truth  with  a 
view  to  the  well-being  of  man.  The  science  of  religion  was  to 
him  "the  greatest  of  all  possible  sciences,  indeed,  in  one  sense, 
the  only  science."  He  considered  that  it  deals  with  matters 
which  are  ultimate,  by  means  of  conceptions  that  either  illumi- 
nate and  explain,  or  distort  and  falsify  all  things ;  for  whatever 
principles  are  ultimate  are  also  all-comprehensive.  And  its 
practical  consequences  seemed  to  him  no  less  vital  than  the 
theoretical.  "The  science  of  religion"  was,  he  thought,  the 
science  of  human  destiny.  If  valid,  if  "the  knowledge  is  real," 
the  greatest  good  of  all  follows  from  it,  namely,  a  good  life  in 
harmony  with  the  nature  of  things:  if  unreal,  then  it  is  doubt- 
ful if  there  be  anywhere  or  in  anything  any  real  or  finally 
reliable  worth. 

Will  you  note,  as  we  pass,  two  things?  1st.  The  high  value 
he  attributes  to  religion.  2nd.  The  strong  accent  thrown  on 
Knowledge,  on  the  Science  of  religion,  as  contributory  to  reli- 
gion itself.  But  both  are  qualified  by  the  ominous  words — 
"if  real/'  These  words,  "if  real,"  are  evidently  not  meant  to 
apply  merely  to  some  particular  form  of  religion  or  religious 
belief.  They  suggest  the  possibility  that  all  so-called  religious 
knowledge  may,  in  its  very  nature,  be  delusive.  Its  objects 
may  be  unreal,  or  they  may  be  above  or  beyond  the  reach  of 
human  intelligence.  The  suspicion  implied  in  the  phrase 
spreads  over  the  whole  domain  of  religion  from  the  lowest  and 
crudest  to  the  highest,  and  like  mist  on  the  countryside,  it  at 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  S 

once  exaggerates  everything  and  makes  everything  seem  unsub- 
stantial. If  the  Knowledge  is  not  real,  then  both  affirmation 
and  denial  are  out  of  place;  they  must  be  out  of  place  where 
nothing  is  certain.  Doubt  itself  is  absurd  under  such  condi- 
tions; enquiry  is  vain,  all  criticism  baseless;  there  can  be  neither 
truth  nor  error;  the  intelligence  is  dismissed  as  futile. 

It  would  seem,  therefore,  that  there  can  be  no  greater  neces- 
sity than  that  of  making  decisively  clear,  if  this  be  possible, 
whether  in  professing  to  know  religious  facts  we  are  dealing 
with  realities  that  are  intelligible,  or  with  the  fictitious  prod- 
ucts of  our  imagination  and  the  confused  emanations  of  our 
desires.  And  there  can  be  no  necessity  more  urgent  if,  as  most 
men  would  confess,  a  man's  religion  expresses  and  determines 
his  attitude  towards  life  as  a  whole.  Whatever  else  religion 
has  meant  to  man — and  it  is  difficult  to  say  what  it  has  not 
meant — it  may  be  said  that  where  the  religious  issue  has  never 
been  raised,  man's  life  drifts.  He  has  not  faced  its  meaning, 
nor  has  his  life  any  dominant  purpose.  He  has  not  fixed  its 
standard  of  values,  nor  determined  what  must  be  sought  first. 
He  is  like  one  storm-driven  in  mid-ocean  without  a  star  whereby 
to  steer,  or  any  land  in  any  direction  for  which  to  make.  His 
little  boat  changes  its  course  with  every  passing  breeze,  and 
points  in  a  new  way  with  the  rise  and  fall  of  every  wave.  His 
life  is  at  the  mercy  of  details,  it  is  indeterminate  and  ineffec- 
tive and  without  a  home.  Religious  faith  cannot  be  otiose,  nor 
can  religious  doubt  or  error  be  innocuous.  For  religion  is  a 
practical  matter,  and  so  indeed  is  irreligion.  Uncertainty  in 
religion  means  hesitancy  in  action,  and  paralyses  the  will  the 
more  tragically  the  more  far-reaching  the  issues.  Verily,  the 
condition  of  man  is  not  enviable  if  the  last  words  he  can  hon- 
estly say  of  religious  knowledge  are  the  words  used  by  Lord 
GifFord— "Such  knowledge,  if  real"  "Would  that  I  could  be 
certain"  is  the  language  of  the  inmost  heart  of  men  when  they 
are  tried  to  the  uttermost.  And  there  are  not  many  men  who, 
some  time  or  another,  are  not  tried  to  the  uttermost. 

The  purpose  of  the  Gifford  lectureship  and  the  first  duty  of 
the  lecturer  are  thus  quite  plain — to  examine  the  causes,  and 


4  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

if  possible  to  remove  this  uncertainty  as  to  the  validity  of  re- 
ligious faith.  The  enterprise  is  as  difficult  as  it  is  great.  And 
the  responsibility  of  the  lecturer  is  the  more  full,  inasmuch  as 
his  liberty  is  complete.  For  he  is  invited  to  reach  no  pre- 
scribed conclusion,  either  positive  or  negative,  on  any  religious 
issue.  He  is  committed  to  nothing  except  to  honest  dealing 
with  his  subject.  He  may  sail  to  any  distance  in  any  direction, 
provided  only  the  love  of  truth  sits  at  the  helm. 

Now,  in  entering  upon  this  adventure  there  is  one  thought 
that,  but  for  one  consideration,  would  give  me  complete  con- 
fidence. Were  the  results  of  religious  research  analogous  to 
those  which  are  attained  by  scientific  research  in  other  fields,  I 
should  be  tempted  to  say  that  mankind  may  even  yet  use  the 
words  of  Paracelsus,  and  say 

"I  go  to  prove  my  soul, 
I  see  my  way  as  birds  their  trackless  way, 
I    shall    arrive!      What   time,    what   circuit   first, 
I  ask  not.    But  unless  God  send  his  hail. 
Or  blinding  fire-balls,  sleet  or  stifling  snow, 
In  some  time,  his  good  time,  I  shall  arrive! 
He  guides  me  and  the  bird." 

Honest  enquiry  in  every  "secular"  region,  whether  of  nature 
or  spirit,  of  mere  theory  or  of  practice,  character  and  conduct, 
is  always  in  itself  rich  in  reward.  So  far  as  I  know  there  are 
no  secular  facts  that  do  not  challenge  the  intelligence  and  ask 
to  be  understood,  and  no  forces,  natural  or  moral,  which  are 
not  better  understood  than  unknown  or  misunderstood.  And 
I  am  not  convinced  that  it  is  otherwise  with  the  facts  of  the 
religious  life.  We  are  told,  of  course,  that  there  are  facts  which 
in  their  nature  are  unintelligible;  not  merely  unknown  up  to 
the  present  time,  but  intrinsically  unknowable,  and  religious 
facts  hold  high  rank  amongst  these  unintelligibles.  But  I  doubt 
whether  there  can  be  anything  unintelligible  except  that  which 
is  irrational,  and  I  doubt  if  anything  real  is  irrational  except 
as  misunderstood.  Look  to  the  assumptions  that  lurk  in  your 
problems  before  you  call  them  insoluble  or  condemn  human 
reason.     In  any  case,  we  need  not  believe  in  an  unintelligible 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  6 

fact  until  we  meet  it,  or  are  told  about  it  by  persons  who  have 
visited  the  ultimate  boundaries  of  human  knowledge  and  looked 
over  the  edge  of  its  limitations  into  fields  which  it  cannot  enter. 
As  a  matter  of  experience,  within  the  fields  of  natural  science 
no  fixed  limits  are  held  to  bar  enquiry  in  any  direction ;  nor  is 
there  any  doubt  that  enquiry  is  the  condition,  first,  of  further 
knowledge,  and,  secondly,  of  effective  practical  purpose  and 
progress  in  the  mastery  of  the  means  of  civilized  life. 

Pri?na  facie  one  might  expect  the  same  results  to  accrue  in 
regard  to  religion.  One  would  expect  that,  however  opposed 
religious  interests  may  be  to  the  secular,  it  were  well  to  enquire 
into  their  meaning  and  value  if  they  have  either  true  meaning 
or  real  value,  and  to  expose  their  emptiness  and  delusiveness  if 
they  have  not. 

But  enquiry  in  this  matter  has  been  held  to  be  vain.  Reli- 
gion has  been  made  to  consist  in  mystic  rites  and  ceremonies; 
and  even  by  our  own  Protestant  teachers  its  appeal  has  been 
directed  often  to  the  whole  of  man  except  his  intelligence — to 
his  feelings,  to  his  emotions,  his  aesthetic  temperament,  his  pru- 
dence, and  even  to  his  "will-to-believe" ;  and  enquiry,  it  has 
been  said,  engenders  rather  than  removes  doubt. 

Now  I  do  not  wish  to  enter  with  any  fulness,  at  least  at  pres- 
ent, upon  a  discussion  of  these  difficulties  as  to  the  possibility 
and  value  of  religious  knowledge.  But  there  is  one  element  in 
the  situation  that  gives  it  additional  seriousness,  and  we  can- 
not well  pass  it  by.  It  is  that  doubt  of  the  validity  of  religious 
knowledge  and  of  the  uses  of  enquiry  is  not,  as  it  would  be 
in  any  other  field,  confined  to  the  sceptics  or  to  men  who  have 
not  learned  by  "experience"  the  worth  of  religious  faith.  It 
is  shared,  and  most  fully,  by  devout  believers.  They  condemn 
doubt  as  a  symbol  of  spiritual  disease,  and  denial  as  not  only 
an  error  but  a  sin:  moreover,  they  maintain  that  the  disease 
cannot  be  cured  and  the  sin  cannot  be  cleansed  away  by  en- 
quiry. Religion  is  not,  they  say,  an  affair  of  the  intellect. 
However  they  may  trust  the  intelligence  and  depend  upon  its 
light  (or  twilight)  in  other  matters,  in  the  matters  of  reli- 
gious faith  its  activities  are  out  of  place,  and  even  mischie- 


6  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

\ous.  They  hclievc  with  Carlylc,  probably  one  of  the  greatest 
spiritual  forces  in  this  country  in  the  nineteenth  century,  that, 
as  he  said,  "Man  is  sent  hither  not  to  question  but  to  work; 
the  end  of  man,  it  was  long  ago  written,  is  an  Action  not  a 
Thought."  *  Knowledge  by  itself,  however  true,  is,  they  con- 
tend, a  mere  looking-on  at  life.  The  very  attempt  to  seek  it  in 
this  province  of  faith  is  unwholesome  self-scrutiny.  What  has 
value  is  not  knowledge  but  the  volition  that  passes  into  deeds. 
"Experience,"  distinguished  by  them,  from  Knowledge,  and  as- 
sumed to  be  independent  of  it,  must  take  its  place.  "Faith,  con- 
viction," as  Carlyle  tells  us,  "were  it  never  so  excellent,  is 
worthless  till  it  convert  itself  into  Conduct.  Nay  properly 
conviction  is  not  possible  tilP  then:  inasmuch  as  all  Speculation 
is  by  nature  endless,  formless,  a  vortex  amid  vortices.  .  .  . 
Doubt  of  any  kind  cannot  be  removed  except  by  action.  .  .  . 
Let  him  who  gropes  painfully  in  darkness  or  uncertain  light 
lay  this  precept  well  to  heart — 'Do  the  dut}^  which  lies  nearest 
thee.  •  .  .  Thy  second  duty  will  already  have  become 
clearer.'  "  '  "Here  on  earth,"  he  adds,  "we  are  soldiers  fight- 
ing in  a  foreign  land,  that  understand  not  the  plan  of  campaign 
and  have  no  need  to  understand  it;  seeing  well  what  is  at  our 
hand  to  be  done.  Let  us  do  it  like  soldiers,  with  submission, 
with  courage,  with  a  heroic  joy."  * 

But,  supposing  that  the  one  thing  which  we  cannot  see  is 
"the  duty"  at  hand  to  be  done?  Supposing  "the  soldier  fight- 
ing in  a  foreign  land"  is  ignorant  not  only  of  the  plan  of  cam- 
paign but  of  the  cause  and  country  he  is  fighting  for  ?  Suppos- 
ing that  so  far  from  comprehending  the  plan,  and  trusting  the 
Commander,  he  finds  no  evidence  anywhere  that  any  plan  exists 
or  any  Commander?  Supposing  he  sees  in  the  whole  troubled 
history  of  mankind  nothing  but  a  confused,  purposeless,  exe- 
crable welter,  the  result  of  "the  fiat  of  a  malignant  Destiny,  or 
the  unintcntioned  stab  of  chance"?  And  such  is  the  outlook 
upon  the  Universe  of  the  man  who  has  lost  his  religious  faith. 

^Characteristics,  p.   13. 

'Anticipating  the  Pragmatists  both  in  their  truth  and  error. 

*Sartor  Resartus,  p.   135.  ^Characteristics,  p.  38. 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  7 

Momentous  happenings  within  our  inner  life — an  intoxicating 
success,  or  a  failure  that  brings  despair,  deep  sorrow,  a  devas- 
tating sin,  a  consuming  hate  or  disappointed  love — may  not 
only  disturb  old  values,  rearranging  the  order  of  priority 
among  life's  aims,  but  destroy  all  values.  Then  does  not  only 
the  natural  life  of  man  become  meaningless,  and  "his  days  pass 
away  as  the  swift  ships,"  leaving  no  trace,  but  the  moral  world 
itself  ceases  to  matter,  and  right  and  wrong  become  terms  not 
to  be  used  by  such  a  being  as  he  is — a  wisp  tossed  about  by 
homeless  winds.  "If  I  be  wicked,  why  then  labour  I  in  vain? 
If  I  wash  myself  with  snow  water  and  make  my  hands  never 
so  clean,  yet  wilt  thou  plunge  rne  in  the  ditch  and  mine  own 
clothes  shall  abhor  me."  *  Job  was  acquainted  with  deeper 
doubt  and  darker  despair  than  Carlyle;  and  so  was  Shake- 
speare. His  Othello,  so  far  from  knowing  his  duty  when  lago 
had  poisoned  his  soul  with  doubts  of  Desdemona,  bade  farewell 
to  "the  tranquil  mind."  "Farewell  content,  farewell  the 
plumed  troop  and  the  big  wars.  Othello's  occupation  s  gone" 
— the  most  pathetic  line  in  all  Shakespeare  it  has  always 
seemed  to  me.  There  was  no  duty  next  to  hand  for  Othello. 
The  cure  suggested  by  Carlyle  is  both  ineffective  and  inap- 
plicable. The  doubts  which  can  be  cured  by  plunging  into 
action  are  shallow ;  the  evil  is  local.  Moreover,  they  are  neither 
removed  nor  cured  by  that  method.  They  are  only  silenced; 
and  silenced  doubts  fester.  The  cure  is  ineffective.  But,  fur- 
ther, deep  doubt  leaves  man  incapable  of  action:  it  paralyses, 
we  say,  so  that  the  cure  cannot  be  applied.  Bunyan,  in  his 
incomparable  way,  teaches  us  a  better  truth  and  offers  a  better 
remedy  than  Carlyle.  He  shows  us  Christian  in  the  fields  just 
outside  the  City  of  Destruction  distracted  with  fear  "lest  the 
burden  on  his  back  should  sink  him  lower  than  the  grave." 
"He  looked  this  way  and  that  way,  as  if  he  would  run,  yet  he 
stood  still,  because  (as  I  perceived)  he  could  not  tell  which  way 
to  go.  'Why  standest  thou  still?'  said  Evangelist  to  him.  He  '^ 
answered,  'Because  I  know  not  whither  to  go.'  Then  he  gave 
him  a  parchment  roll,  and  there  was  written  within,  'Fly  from 

ijob  ix.  29-31, 


8  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

the  wrath  to  come'  The  man,  therefore,  read  it,  and  looking 
upon  Evangelist  very  carefully,  said  'Whither  must  I  fly?' 
Then  said  Evangelist,  pointing  with  his  finger  over  a  very 
wide  field,  'Do  you  see  yonder  wicket  gate?'  The  man  said, 
'No.'  Then  said  the  other,  'Do  you  see  yonder  shining  light?' 
He  said,  'I  think  I  do.'  Then, said  Evangelist,  'Keep  that  light 
in  your  eye  and  go  up  directly  thereto,  so  shalt  thou  see  the 
gate,  at  which  when  thou  knockest,  it  shall  be  told  thee  what 
to  do.'  " 

When  a  man  discovers  that  his  past  has  been  spent  in  the  pur- 
suit of  a  false  good,  and  the  fruit  he  has  plucked  off  the  tree  of 
life  turns  into  ashes  in  his  mouth ;  when  even  its  good  things 
prove  evanescent  and  unreliable,  and  snap  under  the  strain  of 
experience,  then  he  is  passing  through  his  first  course  of  instruc- 
tion. A  light  has  already  begun  to  break  upon  him,  which  is 
hidden  from  those  who  dwell  at  peace  in  the  City  of  Destruc- 
tion. He  has  known  enough  to  go  outside  its  gates  and  look  to 
the  horizon.  And  his  first  need  is  for  more  light.  He  begins 
to  ask  questions.  Is  there  any  healing?  Can  my  broken  life  be 
made  whole  again?  Is  loss,  bereavement,  failure,  the  last  word 
in  my  history?  Or  are  there  grounds  for  believing  that  they 
are  but  ways  of  awakening  my  soul  and  revealing  an  eternally 
benevolent  will?  Old  convictions  have  been  on  their  trial  and 
are  condemned ;  enquiry  is  inevitable. 

So  far  from  doubting  the  value  of  the  plain  and  honest  and 
earnest  pursuit  of  truth  in  matters  of  religious  faith,  I  believe 
that,  like  the  pursuit  of  moral  good,  it  never  utterly  fails.  The 
process  of  enquirj^  the  very  attempt  to  know,  like  the  process 
of  doing  or  trying  to  do  what  is  right,  is  itself  achievement, 
altogether  apart  from  what  comes  aftenvards.  I  know  noth- 
ing better  than  to  be  engaged  and  immersed  in  the  process  of 
trying  to  know  spiritual  truths  and  of  acting  upon  them.  Man- 
kind, when  it  comes  of  age,  will  be  engaged  in  this  spiritual 
business  even  when  it  is  handling  the  so-called  secular  concerns 
of  life.  And  it  will  handle  these  all  the  more  securely.  Reli- 
gion will  be  the  permanent  background  of  life — as  the  love 
of  his  wife  and  bairns  is  for  a  good  man.     The  very  meaning 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  9 

and  purpose  of  our  "circumstances,"  as  we  call  the  claims  of 
the  things  and  persons  that  stand  around  and  press  upon  us, 
may  be  to  induce  and  to  sustain  this  double  process  of  know- 
ing the  true  and  doing  the  right.  It  is  the  method — the  only 
natural  and  successful  method — by  which  men  make  them- 
selves: and  I  understand  that  the  final  business  of  man  is  this 
of  making  himself.  We  must  learn  yet  to  estimate  men  by 
the  fortune  they  take  with  them,  not  by  the  fortune  they  leave 
behind;  that  is,  if  religion  is  true,  and  if  morality  and  its  laws 
are  not  fictions  of  man's  vanity. 

Inasmuch  as  the  process  of  striving  to  know  has,  in  my  opin- 
ion, this  intrinsic  value,  I  should  be  glad  if  I  could  help  were 
it  merely  to  incite,  or  sustain  the  search  into,  and  within,  the 
truths  of  our  religious  faith.  I  would,  if  I  could,  awaken 
enquiry  where  there  has  been  indifference;  foster,  strengthen 
and  embolden  it  wherever  there  has  been  doubt  or  denial,  and 
above  all  where  there  has  been  blind  belief  and  facile  confidence. 
Unless  my  convictions  as  to  both  the  possibility  and  the  reward 
of  a  religious  faith  based  upon  knowledge  are  altogether  false, 
the  man  who  would  gain  most  from  fearless  search  is  the  devout 
believer,  and  especially  the  believer  who  challenges  the  sceptic 
on  his  own  ground  and  invites  the  strain  of  actual  experience 
by  living  his  beliefs,  luelcorning  the  rain  that  descends  and  the 
winds  that  never  fail  to  blow  and  beat  upon  the  house  of  life. 
The  doubt  that  a  man  confronts  purifies  his  faith  from  error, 
substantiates  the  truth  it  contains,  and  strengthens  his  hold. 
Valid  belief  has  nothing  to  fear  from  the  play  of  the  world's 
forces  upon  it ;  and  a  delusive  faith  is  better  exposed  and  washed 
away.  Truth  accepted  without  enquiry,  from  that  hearsay 
which  we  call  tradition,  has  an  ominous  analogy  to  principles 
of  conduct  never  put  in  practice.  Man's  hold  of  them  is  inse- 
cure, for  strength  unexercised  becomes  feebleness.  Moreover, 
no  kind  of  truth  yields  its  richest  meaning  except  under  stress 
and  strain.  The  instance  that  the  scientific  man  prizes  most 
highly  is  that  which  places  his  hypothesis  under  the  severest 
test :  no  instance  can  either  prove  or  disprove,  either  effectively 
expose  falsity  or  ratify  truth,  except  the  instance  he  calls  "cru- 


10  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

cial."  It  is  the  crucial  instance  also  that  expands  the  applica- 
tion and  deepens  the  significance  of  the  hypothesis.  And  the 
same  results  follow  in  regard  to  religious  faith.  The  words 
"I  know  Whom  I  have  believed,"  when  they  are  uttered  by 
one  who  has  walked  hand  in  hand  with  his  own  pettiness  and 
ill-doing,  carry  a  strange  convincing  and  relieving  power;  and 
such  simple  utterances  as  "The  Lord  is  my  Shepherd ;  I  shall 
not  want,"  have  marvellous  wealth  of  meaning  when  they 
come  from  the  lips  of  one  who  knows  what  it  is  to  be  resource- 
less  and  undeserving. 

Now,  in  thus  affirming  the  value  of  the  search  for  religious 
truth  and  of  the  doubts  and  trials  that  test  a  religious  faith,  I 
do  not  wish  to  be  understood  to  advocate  the  fabrication  of 
artificial  difficulties,  either  in  ourselves  or  others.  Wantonly  to 
excite  or  foster  doubt  is  not  a  part  that  an  honest  seeker  after 
truth  can  stoop  to  play.  An  earnest  believer  would  as  soon 
make  a  plaything  of  life  itself  as  of  a  religious  faith ;  for  faith 
is  the  inspiration  of  life.  Such  a  simple  faith  as  Tennyson  de- 
scribes when  he  bids  him  whose  faith  has  centre  everywhere,  to 
"Leave  his  sister  when  she  prays,"  has  not  the  splendour  of  the 
centuries-old,  storm-tossed  oak,  but  it  has  the  beauty  of  the 
moss  and  violet.  Besides,  there  is  no  need  of  fabricating  doubts. 
Groiuing  truth  and  a  maturing  experience  bring  their  own 
doubts;  for  honest  doubt  is  a  new  aspect  of  truth  standing  at 
the  door  and  knocking,  seeking  a  place  in  the  system  of  rational 
experience.  Life  can  be  trusted  to  bring  trials:  man's  part 
is  to  meet  them  as  new  opportunities  of  moving  "onward." 

Nor,  in  the  second  place,  would  I  be  understood  to  imply 
that  Religion  and  the  knowledge  of  Religion  are  one  and  the 
same  thing.  Knowledge  and  the  object  known  are  never  identi- 
cal: Astronomy,  even  if  it  were  perfect  as  a  Science,  would 
not  consist  of  stars  and  planets,  nor  would  a  sound  Physiology 
be  sound  physical  health.  Nevertheless,  religious  knowledge 
may  be  a  condition  of  a  religious  faith  and  a  religious  life. 
Knowledge  is  certainly  the  condition  of  all  the  spiritual  experi- 
ences which  men,  rightly  or  wrongly,  distinguish  from  religion. 

However  true  it  may  be  that  knowledge  of  what  is  right  is 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  11 

far  from  being  the  doing  of  it,  that  which  is  done  in  ignorance 
cannot  be  called  morally  good.  The  moral  life  is  impossible 
in  the  degree  in  which  knowledge  of  what  is  right  or  wrong 
is  lacking.  Though  the  ideal  is  not  the  deed,  the  deed  that  is 
not  first  an  ideal  known  and  valued  and  chosen  cannot  have 
any  spiritual  worth. 

The  relation  between  religious  knowledge,  religious  faith 
and  religious  life  will  demand  fuller  consideration  later.  It 
may  be  sufficient  at  present  to  insist  that,  like  vital  organs  of 
a  living  body,  they  derive  their  value  and  meaning,  if  not  their 
very  existence,  from  their  mutual  involution.  If  we  sever 
knowledge  from  faith,  or  faith  from  conduct,  we  have  on  the 
one  hand  otiose  and  impotent  conceptions,  and  on  the  other 
hand  a  behaviour  that  know^s  not  what  it  is  doing  or  whom  it 
is  serving.  We  are  left,  I  think,  with  self-contradictory  fictions 
— things  that  can  neither  be  understood  nor  even  exist. 

It  follows  that  if  religious  knowledge  is  thus  a  vital  condi- 
tion of  religious  experience,  then  that  which  hinders  the  pursuit 
of  this  knowledge  imperils  religion.  And  if  I  were  asked  from 
what  direction  come  the  graver  dangers  that  threaten  religious 
life  in  these  times  and  in  this  country  of  Britain,  I  should 
answer,  without  any  hesitation,  that  they  come  from  the  causes 
which  turn  aside  the  minds  of  men  from  reflection  upon  the 
things  of  the  spirit  and  arrest  or  impede  enquiry.  For  what 
occupies  the  mind  determines  conduct.  Tell  me  what  a  man 
thinks  about  and  I  will  come  near  telling  you  what  he  will  do. 
"His  delight  is  in  the  law  of  the  Lord;  and  in  his  law  doth 
he  meditate  day  and  night."  What  about  him?  "He  shall 
be  like  a  tree  planted  by  the  rivers  of  water,  that  bringeth  forth 
his  fruit  in  his  season;  his  leaf  also  shall  not  wither." 

Believing  with  all  my  heart  that  in  the  last  resort  there  is 
only  one  way  of  knowing,  and  that  there  is  no  form  of  human 
experience  where  knowledge  is  not  better  than  ignorance,  or 
where  error  is  not  dangerous  and  costly;  believing,  secondly, 
that  the  more  profound  and  fundamental  the  practical  issues 
which  are  at  stake,  the  higher  the  value  of  truth  and  the  deeper 
the  tragedies  of  falsehood,  and  therefore  the  more  imperative 


12  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

the  duty  of  pursuing  the  former  and  exposing  the  latter;  and 
believing,  lastl}^,  that  there  is  no  direction  in  which  humble, 
simple,  sincere  and  at  the  same  time  trustful,  intrepid  and  even 
adventurous  research  can  bring  so  rich  a  harvest  as  that  of 
religion, — possessed  by  such  a  creed,  how  can  I  but  deplore 
the  timid  methods  of  the  chief,  nay,  the  only  official  guardian 
of  the  spiritual  interests  of  our  people,  and  yearn  for  the  day 
when  the  Church  shall  wholly  entrust  the  guardianship  of  the 
divine  authority  of  its  doctrines  to  their  intrinsic  truth?  "So 
truth  be  in  the  field,"  said  John  Milton,  "we  do  injuriously 
...  to  misdoubt  her  strength.  Let  her  and  falsehood  grap- 
ple," "who  ever  knew  Truth  put  to  the  worse  in  a  free  and 
open  encounter?"  "For  who  knows  not  that  Truth  is  strong, 
next  to  the  Almighty?  She  needs  no  policies,  nor  stratagems, 
nor  licensings  to  make  her  victorious,  those  are  the  shifts  and 
the  defences  that  error  uses  against  her  power.  Give  her  but 
room,  and  do  not  bind  her  when  she  sleeps."  ^ 

Freedom  is  the  condition  of  every  spiritual  good — of  re- 
ligious truths  not  less  than  of  moral  virtue — and  it  is  a  plea 
for  free  enquiry  that  I  find  in  the  second  matter  emphasized  by 
Lord  Gifford  when  he  said,  "I  wish  the  lecturers  to  treat  their 
subject  as  a  strictly  natural  science.  ...  I  wish  it  con- 
sidered just  as  astronomy  or  chemistry  is." 

''■Areopagitica,   p.   96. 


LECTURE    II 

THE  SCEPTICAL  OBJECTIONS  TO  ENQUIRY  IN   RELIGION   STATED 
AND   EXAMINED 

The  main  purpose  of  our  first  lecture  was  to  advocate  enquiry 
in  matters  of  religious  faith  and  experience.  In  any  other  field 
of  man's  interests  nothing  could  be  less  necessary.  Whatever 
may  be  the  relation  between  man's  knowledge  and  conduct,  and 
between  his  conduct  and  his  well-being,  enquiry  is  regarded  as 
the  way  to  knowledge  in  temporal  matters.  The  nature  and 
extent  of  man's  knowledge  is  a  clue  to  the  range  of  his  practical 
achievements,  and,  as  a  rule,  a  necessary  condition  of  his  pros- 
perity. In  fact,  ignorance  is  a  doubtful  and  insecure  bliss,  and 
error  a  treacherous  ally.  It  cannot  be  denied  that  with  our 
best  efforts  we  often  fail  to  arrive  at  the  truth.  There  seems 
to  be  in  every  least  fact  a  baffling  "bej'ond" ;  although,  in  truth, 
the  "beyond"  means  rootn  to  press  foi-ward,  and  is  an  invitation 
to  come  still  nearer  the  fact.  Nevertheless,  even  if  the  findings 
of  our  intelligence  are  always  incomplete  and  often  insecure, 
we  do  not  condemn  its  activities  as  a  whole,  nor  do  we  subordi- 
nate it  to  any  other  authority.  Its  failures  are  turned  into 
occasions  for  a  more  full  and  severe  use  of  its  methods.  How- 
ever defective  our  intellectual  powers  may  be,  we  deem  it  best 
to  make  the  best  use  of  them  that  we  can. 

I  dare  say  you  have  observed,  in  the  next  place,  that  in  every 
investigation  of  every  kind — whether  in  our  scientific  labora- 
tories, or  in  our  Courts  of  Law,  or  in  our  commercial  dealings, 
or  in  our  social  activities — whenever  we  want  the  truth  and 
nothing  but  the  truth,  we  endeavour  to  secure  conditions  under 
which  the  operations  of  the  intelligence  are  not  hindered.     So 

13 


14  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

far  from  appealing  to  feeling,  we  desire  a  light  that  is  "clear" 
and  "calm."  We  observe,  generalize,  judge,  reason;  and  how- 
ever deeply  our  feelings  may  be  disturbed  or  enlisted,  we  try 
to  prevent  them  from  assuming  the  role  of  witnesses.  Of 
course,  our  emotions  have  their  own  place  and  value,  but  we 
refrain  from  attributing  to  them  the  functions  of  the  intelli- 
gence as  well  as  their  own. 

Now,  the  question  arises,  and  we  cannot  pass  it  by,  why 
is  the  attitude  of  many  able,  sincere  and  even  devout  men  dif- 
ferent towards  Religion?  For  you  will,  I  believe,  agree  with 
me  that  there  is  no  great,  practical  interest  where  the  uses  of 
the  intelligence  are  so  little  esteemed.  The  mind  of  these  times, 
it  is  true,  is  not  disturbed  by  Aggressive  Scepticism,  as  it  was 
in  the  time  of  "Darwin  and  Huxley  and  other  wooden-headed 
philosophers,"  as  I  heard  an  old  Scottish  parish  minister  call 
these  splendid  men.  Agnosticism  has  also  lost  much  of  its 
charm  now  that  Natural  Science  has  recognized  the  limits  of  its 
task.  Nor,  again,  is  it  a  low  estimate  of  Religion  that  arrests 
the  agnostic's  enquiry.  It  is  the  conviction  that  of  Religion 
only  one  thing  can  be  known,  namely,  that  we  cannot  know 
whether  the  central  articles  of  its  faith  are  true  or  not.  So 
even  good  and  thoughtful  men  put  the  question  on  one  side, 
just  as  if  the  truth  or  falsity  of  religious  faith  were  no  very 
urgent  matter.  They  assent  to  things  they  only  half  believe, 
and  reject  things  they  have  never  earnestly  examined.  The 
attitude  is  that  of  relative  indifference — the  most  dangerous  of 
all,  I  think;  for  it  is  the  unlooked-for  evils  that  always  work 
most  havoc. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  trust  in  exceptional  or  miraculous 
Revelation,  at  least  in  the  Protestant  world,  is  far  less  strong 
and  general  than  it  was  forty  years  ago.  Intelligent  people 
have  begun  to  think  that  all  human  historj^,  or  none  of  it,  is 
sacred — a  revelation  of  a  Will  to  Good  that  cannot  fail ;  and 
they  also  believe  that  the  unvarying  and  universal  order  of  the 
world  of  things  may  be  a  more  sure  and  inspiring  Revelation 
than  any  occasional  interruption  of  that  order.  Moreover,  the 
age  is  far  less  tolerant  of  dogma  in  every  department  of  life — 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  16 

economic,  social,  political,  as  well  as  religious — and  often  pre- 
fers to  trust  its  own  hasty  ignorance.  It  welcomes  the 
^'Sciences"  of  these  departments,  rickety  as  they  often  are. 
But  Avhile  the  very  minds  which  are  most  thickly  encrusted 
with  the  crass  stupidity  of  a  merely  economic  outlook,  and  be- 
lieve that  lucre  is  wealth,  have  discovered  the  profitable  use 
of  Natural  Science;  the  need,  the  use,  or  even  the  possibility 
of  a  Science  of  Religion  is  doubted. 

In  the  next  place,  there  are  religious  men  who  have  lost  much 
of  their  reverence  for  "ready-made"  truths,  and  in  their  assem- 
blies would  relax  or  multiply  the  meanings  of  the  creeds — a 
thing  not  worthy  of  that  noble  class  of  men  which  the  Scotch 
clergy  is.  But  as  yet  they  give  too  little  evidence  of  a  desire 
to  make  the  Articles  of  their  Creed  starting-points  of  enquiry, 
by  the  usual  methods  of  growing  knowledge.  There  is  little 
enterprise  in  their  theologj^,  and  their  science  is  the  only  one 
that  has  its  face  turned  towards  the  past  and  whose  doctrines 
must  be  static.  They  do  not  welcome  the  severe  operations  of 
the  enquiring,  observing,  discriminating,  generalizing,  judging, 
reasoning  intellect  after  the  manner  of  the  sciences  that  grow. 
These  laboursome  operations  by  which  mankind  guides  all  the 
rest  of  life's  experiments  are  held  to  have  a  secondary,  and 
even  a  doubtful,  value  in  religion.  There  are,  we  are  told, 
easier  means  at  the  hands  of  the  religious,  and  these  means 
are  supposed  to  lead  to  results  which  cannot  be  questioned. 
For  these  results  come  of  themselves,  "from  above,"  while  the 
believer  is  simply  a  passive  and  grateful  recipient ;  or  they  come 
by  way  of  the  emotions;  or,  again,  they  issue  from  immediate 
labourless  perception  and  are  products  of  the  power  of  "intui- 
tion," of  which  every  individual  has  his  own  private  stock,  and 
whose  results,  however  inconsistent,  are  always  true  for  him. 
If  all  this  is  so,  why  should  we  turn  to  the  toilsome  methods 
of  scientific  enquiry  or  the  still  severer  ways  of  philosophic  re- 
flection? Let  us  wait  till  the  intuitive  moment  comes.  Or 
if  any  tenets  of  our  religion  seem  doubtful,  let  us  ask  our 
"hearts" ;  and  if  the  heart  as  well  as  the  head  doubts,  then  we 
must  resolve  to  believe  the  doctrines  in  spite  of  them  both. 


16  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

The  free  use  of  the  intellect — "frce-thinkinp;,"  as  it  was  called 
— is  perhaps  not  now  a  sin,  but  one  would  certainly  gather  that 
fettered-thinking  is  devoutness.  We  do  not  use  the  same  terms 
to-day:  the  "Rationalist"  is  now  a  person  who  may  be  re- 
spected. But  his  successor,  the  "Intcllectuallst,"  is  an  object 
of  scorn  to  those  who,  I  suppose,  are  otherwise  equipped. 

I  must  later  examine  the  counter-claims  of  these  substitutes 
for  intelligence  quite  closely.  At  present  I  turn  for  a  moment 
to  another  alleged  characteristic  of  our  times.  According  to 
a  very  charming  repentant  Rationalist,  the  one  marked  advance 
of  the  new  spirit  of  the  times  "is  the  substitution  of  emotional 
values  for  intellectualized  ideals."  It  is  being  discovered  that 
"natural  religion  is  emotional  rather  than  intellectual  in  origin, 
is  based  not  on  mistaken  theory,  but  on  certain  individual  and 
especially  social  reactions;  that  the  province  of  religion  is,  in  a 
w^ord,  not  truth  or  falsehood,  not  mistaken  ideals,  but  values." 
What  the  relation  maj^  be  between  truths  and  values  is  left 
somewhat  obscure,  and  it  is  not  easy  to  suppress  such  questions 
as  the  following,  even  though  their  origin  be  the  intelligence. 
Does  emotion  originate  anything?  Or  is  it  not  itself  an  after- 
glow of  right  or  wrong  apprehension,  and  of  evaluation?  Is 
the  value  of  the  emotions  independent  of  their  relation  to  facts? 
Does  it  not  matter  for  religion  whether  in  truth  there  is,  or 
there  is  not,  a  God,  provided  you  feel  as  if  there  were  a  God? 
Is  it  of  no  consequence  whether  he  is  a  God  who  loves  or  a  God 
who  hates,  provided  you  have  certain  emotions?  Are  some 
emotions  to  be  approved  and  others  condemned?  If  so,  on 
what  grounds  except  that  they  are  agreeable  or  disagreeable? 
Have  any  emotions  any  moral  or  spiritual  value  in  themselves? 
What  or  who  is  to  judge  these  matters,  and  by  what  standard, 
if  you  cast  out  reason  and  regard  truth  as  irrelevant?  Are 
religious  emotions  possible  except  in  virtue  of  intellectual  appre- 
hension? And  is  there  any  apprehension  except  in  virtue  of 
all  the  powers  of  mind  ? 

It  is  not  meant  by  those  who  hold  this  view  of  value  that 
religion  is  irrational,  or  that  its  contents  are  not  valid.  But 
the  cause  and  the  proof  of  their  validity  and  worth  lie  else- 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  17 

where.  The  ultimate  appeal,  they  say,  is  to  our  sense  of  worth, 
not  to  reason  and  its  processes  of  observing,  conceiving,  judg- 
ing and  inferring.  The  satisfaction  of  reason  is  one  thing  to 
them,  the  satisfaction  of  the  self  is  another.  Mere  truth  can 
satisfy  the  former.  But  that  satisfaction  is  incomplete  and 
superficial,  for  truth  is  only  one  aspect  of  the  good  and  consists 
of  mere  ideas.  It  is  only  "the  good,"  real  and  concrete,  that 
can  satisfy  the  self:  and  the  heart  is  the  essential  self.  They 
do  not  reckon  that  we  have  reached  the  man  w^hen  only  his 
intellect  concurs.  Nothing  touches  the  self  except  that  which 
penetrates  and  possesses  the  heart;  and  it  is  from  the  heart 
that  man's  volitions  and  character  spring.  They  have  thus  no 
doubt  as  to  which  is  the  higher  authority,  or  w^hether  it  is  the 
dictates  of  the  reason  or  of  feeling  that  good  men  will  obey 
if  they  happen  to  disagree. 

This  view  which  subordinates  the  true  to  the  Good  (good 
consisting  in  the  emotional  satisfaction  it  brings)  we  find  in 
Lotze.  I  refer  to  it  because  it  is  being  revived  more  or  less 
by  some  recent  writers  on  philosophy,  Lotze  in  his  Preface  to 
his  Microcosmus  says: 

"If  the  object  of  all  human  investigation  were  but  to  produce 
in  cognition  a  reflection  of  the  world  as  it  exists,^  of  what  value 
would  be  all  its  labour  and  pains,  which  could  result  only  in 
vain  repetition,  in  an  imitation  within  the  soul  of  that  which 
exists  without  it?  What  significance  could  there  be  in  this 
barren  rehearsal?"  "Taking  truth  as  a  whole,  we  are  not 
justified  in  regarding  it  as  a  mere  self-centred  splendour." 
"Views  must  justify  themselves  by  the  permanent  or  increasing 
satisfaction  which  they  are  capable  of  affording  to  those  spirit- 
ual demands,  which  cannot  be  put  off  or  ignored."  " 

It  does  not  seem  to  have  occurred  to  Lotze  that  Good 
isolated  from  Truth  would  be  just  as  empty  and  illusory.  But 
I  postpone,  at  least  for  the  present,  all  criticism  of  this  view — 
with  one  remark.     Is  there  any  other  province  of  life  in  which 

^I  wish  we  had  time  to  examine  this  view  of  knowledge  as  a  reflection  and 
imitation,  and  of  minds  as  mirrors. 

-Lotze,  Preface  viii  and  ix  of  Microcosmus. 


18  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

you  would  make  the  validity  of  an  idea  depend  on  the  satisfac- 
tion it  brings? 

I  must  now  ask  a  more  fundamental  question,  and  turn  to 
the  central  issue.  We  must  find,  if  we  can,  what  the  reason  is 
for  thus  ascribing  a  subordinate  part  to  the  intellect  in  matters 
of  religion,  and  practically  nowhere  else.  Let  us  state  the  case 
of  those  who  hold  this  view  as  fairly  as  we  can.  They  might 
say  that  it  is  because  religion  stands  by  itself  as  a  human  experi- 
ence. The  facts,  the  data  on  which  man  employs  his  powers 
in  religion,  are  entirely  different  from  all  others.  The  central 
fact  of  religious  experience  is  that  it,  and  it  alone,  implies  the 
direct  relation  of  man  to  a  divine  being,  that  is  to  say,  to  an 
object  that  is  in  every  sense  perfect.  And  the  intellect,  we  are 
told,  can  neither  reach  nor  comprehend  such  an  object.  Re- 
ligion reaches  over  to  what  is  beyond  the  finite  and  secondary 
and  temporal  to  that  which  is  infinite  and  absolute.  It  occupies 
the  region  of  the  things  that  are  unconditional,  i.e.  of  those 
whose  value  and  validity  lie  in  themselves  alone.  Everywhere 
else  objects  derive  their  meaning  and  their  worth  from  their 
relations  to  one  another.  Their  relations,  their  interactions 
are  their  qualities.  Hence  neither  the  meaning  nor  the  value  of 
an  object  by  itself — if  you  could  find  one — is  ever  complete 
and  satisfying.  To  explain  anything,  you  say  that  it  does  this 
to,  or  suffers  this  from,  other  things.  Man  does  well  to  deal 
with  these  things  by  means  of  his  ratiocinating  faculties,  creep- 
ing around  from  fact  to  fact.  But  in  religion  man  must  attain 
his  object  at  first  leap,  or  not  at  all.  The  religion  that  comes 
by  inference,  as  a  conclusion  from  finite  premisses,  can  have 
neither  value  nor  validity  beyond  such  premisses.  It  is  based 
upon,  and  therefore  assimilated  to  and  infected  by,  the  temporal 
interests  of  a  limited  life. 

What  shall  we  say  to  this?  When  the  time  comes  I  shall 
try  to  show  that  the  "infinite,"  which  is  unintelligible,  is  no 
true  infinite,  but  a  thoroughly  confused  notion.  Meantime, 
one  thing  at  least  is  clear.  That  for  which  Lord  Gififord  stip- 
ulated cannot  be  unreservedly  granted.  To  accede  at  once  to 
his  wish  "that  the  lecturers  should  treat  their  subject   as  a 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  19 

strictly  natural  Science  .  .  .  just  as  astronomy  or  chemis- 
try is,"  were  to  proceed  on  assumptions  that  are  admitted, 
neither  by  Sceptics,  nor  by  Agnostics,  nor  by  many  religious 
believers. 

Moreover,  the  Science  of  to-day  recognizes  this.  At  least  it 
does  not  show  the  same  alacrity  as  formerly  in  applying  uni- 
form methods  ever3"where  and  to  everything.  Natural  science 
has  ceased  to  issue  decrees  on  spiritual  matters.  It  has  recog- 
nized that  its  own  domain  as  natural  science  is  limited  to 
natural  facts.  How  far  it  is  on  the  way  to  a  further  discovery 
that,  as  natural  science,  it  is  limited  to  natural  facts  minus 
their  relations  to  man's  mind  and  spirit  is  a  bigger  question 
and,  I  venture  to  say,  a  more  vital  one  for  both  Science  and 
Religion.  At  any  rate,  so  far  from  supporting  the  Agnosticism 
or  Naturalism  of  last  century.  Natural  Science  now  leaves  the 
spiritual  field  comparatively  clear  for  the  theologian  and  the 
philosopher. 

It  is  philosophical  Idealism  that  mainly  insists  on  the  imma- 
nence of  spiritual  principles  in  natural  facts,  and  therefore  on 
the  comprehensibility  of  religious  truths.  But  it  seems  to  bring 
some  unexpected  consequences.  Professing  to  bring  out  more 
fully  the  spiritual  implications — that  is,  the  deepest  meaning — 
of  natural  facts.  Idealism  has  succeeded,  as  some  think,  only  in 
rendering  spiritual  facts  themselves  mysterious  and  in  once 
more  exposing  the  limits  of  reason.  Such  Idealism,  we  are  told, 
tends  to  Mysticism.  "Mysticism  in  practice,"  we  are  told,  "is 
the  necessar}'  correlative  of  immanence  in  theology."  And  "the 
mystic  conception  of  religion"  is  said  to  appeal  "more  and  more 
strongly  to  the  younger  generation."  "Most  significant"  (says 
a  recent  writer) ,  "even  among  Anglicans  who  not  so  long  ago 
boasted  themselves  Protestants,  sacraments  are  felt  to  be  of 
more  spiritual  value  than  sermons;  not,  I  think,  because  they 
embody  any  savage  and  obsolete  magical  efficacy,  but  because 
they  stand  for  a  mystical  communion."  And  "the  mystic, 
feeling  himself  a  part  of  his  God,  is  rid  of  all  his  asking." 
Reason  may  come  in,  but  only  "to  analyse  and  confirm."  Even 
"great  apostles  of  reason,"  such  apparently  as  Mr.  Bertrand 


20  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

Russell,  "plead  for  creative  impulse  as  the  supreme  value."  ' 
And  it  is  only  a  cynic  who  would  reply  that  the  distrust  of 
reason  on  their  part  is  not  surprising. 

Now,  without  pretending  to  agree  in  all  respects  with  these 
estimates  of  our  time,  I  must  admit  that  the  issue  between 
those  who  trust  and  those  who  deny  or  limit  the  uses  of  natural 
reason  in  religion  is  becoming  more  clear.  The  choice  of  those 
who  are  interested  in  religion  must  be  decisive.  In  particular 
the  ambiguous  position  which  Protestantism  has  hitherto  occu- 
pied is  becoming  more  and  more  untenable.  Protestantism  gen- 
erally must  either  follow  the  alleged  example  of  Anglicanism 
or  it  must  maintain  unreservedly  that  religion  not  only  cannot, 
but  ought  not  to  satisfy  the  heart  of  man,  and  control  his  emo- 
tions and  will,  unless  it  also  satisfies  the  intelligence.  Protes- 
tantism has  appealed  to  Caesar,  and  to  Caesar  it  must  go.  It 
has  affirmed  the  Right  of  private  Judgment  in  religion,  it  must 
establish  that  right,  and  satisfy  the  intelligence.  And  the  in- 
telligence cannot  and  ought  not  to  be  satisfied  except  by  a  faith 
whose  truth  is  intrinsic,  and  recognized  as  such.  And  the  truth 
which  is  intrinsic  is  valid  irrespective  of  when,  or  how,  or  by 
whom  it  is  uttered.  It  is  objective,  it  is  present  in  the  facts  as 
their  meaning,  waiting  there  to  be  set  free  by  the  operations 
of  reason,  ready  to  spring  into  existence  in  the  form  of  con- 
victions which  are  at  once  authoritative  and  free.  It  is  not 
only  objective,  but  it  is  also  universal.  It  is  there  for  every 
mind  that  can  seize  it;  and  it  satisfies  every  mind.  And  it  is 
all  the  more  satisfying  to  the  individual's  heart,  all  the  more 
powerful  to  inspire  and  guide  his  conduct,  all  the  more  per- 
sonal, subjective  and  intimate,  in  that  it  is  necessarily  true  for 
every  intelligence  and  an  exposition  of  the  actual  reality  of 
things. 

Can  the  religious  world  rise  to  the  height  of  this  adventure 
of  seeking  it?  On  the  answer  to  this  question,  I  believe,  de- 
pends all  that  is  best  for  mankind.  There  is  no  other  way 
to  secure  the  fundamental  condition  of  happiness  and  virtue. 
That  condition  is  freedom.    Man  is  not  free  if  he  acts  in  obedi- 

'See  Rationalism  and  Religious  Reaction,  by  Miss  Jane  E.  Harrison. 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  21 

ence  to  necessities  which  he  does  not  value  and  choose,  and  he 
cannot  either  value  or  choose  except  amongst  things  that  he 
apprehends  and  in  the  degree  in  which  he  comprehends.  The 
choice  of  the  unknown  is  impossible,  and  his  obedience  to  it  is 
not  the  obedience  of  a  rational  being.  And  it  has  no  merit. 
He  cannot  fully  obey,  he  cannot  dedicate  himself  to  the  service 
of  the  Best,  if  he  is  not  free.  To  give  himself  he  must  first 
own  himself.  Hence  I  make  no  apology  for  entering  more  fully 
into  this  question  of  the  rights  and  the  obligations  of  the  in- 
telligence in  the  domain  of  religion,  or,  in  other  words,  of  the 
possibility  and  nature  and  value  of  a  science  of  religion.  Let 
us  look  yet  more  closely  into  the  case  of  those  who  deny  that 
possibility,  admitting  every  jot  and  tittle  of  truth  it  may 
contain. 

It  must  be  admitted,  in  the  first  place,  that  the  question  of 
scientific  method  does  depend,  as  is  maintained,  upon  the  nature 
of  the  facts  to  be  comprehended.  Hence,  if,  or  in  so  far  as, 
religious  facts  differ  from  secular  facts,  they  must  be  treated  in 
a  different  way.  That  the  facts  of  a  science  determine  the 
method  of  science  we  have  been  all  too  slow  to  learn  and  to 
take  to  heart:  especially  in  its  bearing  upon  the  methods  of 
the  natural  sciences  and  of  the  sciences  of  man — such  as  ethics, 
politics,  logic.  The  sciences  of  man  to-day  are  hindered  by 
problems  which  not  only  seem  but  are  insoluble,  and  it  has 
not  been  realized  that  they  ought  never  to  be  asked,  and  never 
would  be  asked  if  we  did  not  bring  to  the  field  presuppositions 
and  methods  which  belong  to  another  field.  The  key  that- 
opens  one  lock  will  spoil  another.  Presuppositions  which  would 
be  valid  of  a  merely  natural  object  will  only  distort  the  facts 
about  objects  which  are  natural  and  more.  A  merely  physical, 
chemical  or  physiological  account  of  man  might  be  admirable 
if  he  did  not  think,  fall  into  errors  and  arrive  at  truths,  do 
what  is  wrong  and  sometimes  what  is  right.  After  all,  man 
somehow  see?ns  to  be  more  than  a  collection  of  material  parti- 
cles, or  an  ingenious  machine,  or  even  an  instinctive  beast. 
And  this  "seeming"  must  be  accounted  for.  The  natural 
sciences  need  not  be  held  as  alien  or  even  irrelevant  to  the 


22  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

enquiry  as  to  the  nature  of  man  and  the  meaning  of  his  life. 
On  the  contrary,  it  is  well  to  remember  that  however  "spir- 
itual" man's  nature  may  be,  it  appears  to  us  to  exist  and  act 
only  in  virtue  of  its  relation  to  natural  facts.  Whatever  more 
human  nature  may  be,  it  is  one  of  these ;  but  to  ignore  the  fact 
that  it  is  more  is  a  ruinous  error.  However  much  modern 
science  and  philosophy  may  insist  on  the  continuity  of  that 
which  is  real,  and  deny  any  break  between  the  physical  and 
the  mental  or  moral  (or  metaphysical),  a  living  and  a  thinking 
thing  seems  to  act  in  ways  diiiferent  from  other  material  com- 
pounds. 

If  it  be  true  that  "the  brain  secretes  thought  as  the  liver 
secretes  bile,  and  that  poetry  is  a  product  of  the  smaller  in- 
testines," then  we  must  change  our  notions  of  the  brain  and 
liver  and  intestines.  They  turn  into  thinkers  and  poets  under 
our  very  hands,  if  they  do  these  things;  and  we  must  give  them 
credit  for  it,  and  not  call  them  dead  matter  any  more.  So 
long  as  the  ruling  conceptions  of  the  physical  sciences  retain 
their  present  limitations,  they  cannot  explain  mental  phenomena 
even  if  they  are  illusions.  A  complete  mathematical  account  of 
man,  giving  the  sum  of  the  atoms  that  make  him  up,  reducing 
his  shape  into  geometrical  figures  and  giving  the  theoretical 
mechanics  of  his  muscular  and  nervous  contortions  would  leave 
much  out;  and  it  would  not  give  a  complete  or  true  account 
even  of  his  physical  changes.  Would  we  know  man  at  all,  if 
we  only  knew  him  as  a  physical  apparatus  or  chemical  com- 
pound? 

The  quantitative  method  has  limits  to  its  use,  beyond  which 
it  will  not  enlighten;  so  have  the  phj'sical,  the  chemical,  the 
biological,  the  physiological  and  even  the  psychological.  And 
that  which  imposes  the  limit  is  always  the  same.  It  is  the 
abstraction  of  the  sciences,  their  dealings  not  with  facts  in  their 
fulness,  but  which  selected  aspects  of  them,  or  (if  this  saying  be 
hard)  with  facts  some  of  whose  relations  have  been  omitted; 
and  above  all,  I  believe,  their  relation  to  the  ultimate  principle 
of  what  is  real  and  true. 

One  of  the  most  striking  and  eventful  characteristics  of  re- 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  23 

c«nt  scientific  thinkers  is  their  discovery  of  and  acquiescence 
in  the  limitations  of  their  task.  They  do  not  pretend,  as  they 
did  in  the  last  quarter  of  the  last  century,  to  relate  their  facts 
to  ultimate  principles.  That  enterprise  they  leave  to  the  phi- 
losopher who  has  no  option  but  to  seek  The  True  and  The 
Good — traveller,  as  he  is,  on  an  endless  way.  And  the  re- 
straint of  the  natural  sciences  is  bringing  its  rich  reward,  as 
Kant  indicated  nearly  one  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago.  They 
are  now  progressive.  They  are  advancing  steadily  in  the  com- 
pass and  in  the  security  of  their  results.  But  philosophy  is 
always  turning  back  upon  its  own  footsteps,  and  quite  rightly. 
Like  religion,  it  is  at  all  times  seeking  to  know  and  to  apply 
the  criterion  of  final  truth  and  value.  For  the  necessities  of 
man  as  an  intelligent  being  are  the  same  as  those  of  man  as  a 
moral  and  religious  being  in  this  respect:  he  can  find  rest  only 
in  the  Whole.  Nothing  but  the  Infinite  which  illuminates 
every  item  of  finitude  can  satisfy  either  his  intelligence  or  his 
desires.  And  we  do  not  arrive  at  Wholeness,  as  that  which  is 
self-sufficient,  self-determining  and  self-explanatory,  till  we  ar- 
rive at  the  philosophy  which  is  true,  and  a  religion  which  has 
valid  worth. 


LECTURE    III 

THE  NATURE  OF  RELIGION 

In  the  last  lecture  we  pointed  out  a  grave  difficulty  in  follow- 
ing the  injunction  of  Lord  Gifford  and  treating  Natural  Re- 
ligion "as  a  purely  natural  science,  like  astronomy  or  chem- 
istry." We  saw  that  the  method  of  a  science  depends  on  the 
nature  of  the  facts  it  professes  to  explain;  and  the  facts  of 
religion  are  spiritual  facts,  and  seem,  at  any  rate,  to  stand  in 
striking  contrast,  and  even  opposition,  to  all  "natural"  facts. 

The  significance  of  this  contrast,  we  further  saw,  is  realized 
by  scientific  thinkers  to-day  as  it  never  was  before.  They 
recognize  that  even  if  the  natural  domain  is  not  separate  from 
the  spiritual,  but  continuous  with  it,  a  natural  explanation  is 
incomplete  and  inadequate.  In  other  words,  it  is  now  recog- 
nized by  scientific  men  themselves  that  the  purpose  of  the  nat- 
ural sciences  is  limited.  They  know  that  they  set  forth  from 
hypotheses,  and  they  do  not  pretend  to  give  a  final  and  full 
explanation  of  the  nature  of  the  real.  They  are  becoming 
conscious  that  natural  science  omits  an  aspect  of  what  is  real. 
They  even  realize,  to  some  degree  at  least,  that  when  they 
omit  the  relation  of  natural  facts  to  man,  they  may  be  omitting 
what  is  of  vital  significance.  I  have  no  doubt  that  they  will 
yet  correct  the  omission  and  help  the  philosopher  to  find  room 
for  man  in  the  natural  scheme,  to  re-interpret  that  scheme  in 
his  light,  and  to  restore  the  wholeness  of  what  is  real.  At 
present  they  acquiesce,  as  we  have  seen,  in  the  limitation  of 
their  own  aims,  and  they  leave  the  investigation  of  spiritual 
phenomena  to  others. 

Now  that  which  imposes  limits  on  a  science  is  always  the 

24 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  26 

same.  Its  purpose  is  limited,  and  it  deals  with  only  single 
aspects  of  facts.  Every  science  has  its  particular  point  of  view 
and  purpose,  and  it  recognizes  only  those  features  of  a  fact 
which  are  relevant  to  that  purpose.  Physics,  the  greatest,  or 
at  least  the  greatest  group,  of  all  the  Natural  Sciences,  is  a 
science  of  measurement.  It  deals  with  quantities.  Of  quali- 
tative differences  it  offers  no  explanation.  But  there  are  no 
facts  without  qualities.  And  when  we  pass  on  to  biological 
facts  qualitative  considerations  become  vital  and  paramount, 
and  physical  conceptions  cease  to  help  in  any  significant  way. 
Still  more  is  this  the  case  when  the  facts  considered  are  psychi- 
cal and  self-conscious.  The  quantitative  sciences,  being  the 
most  abstract,  become  less  and  less  adequate  the  more  concrete, 
that  is,  the  more  complex,  the  unity  of  the  differences  of  an 
object. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  more  that  qualitative  considerations 
enter,  the  more  the  direct  convincingness  of  the  proof  disap- 
pears. Hence  some  philosophers,  like  Lotze,  have  maintained 
that  conclusive  demonstration  is  not  possible  except  in  Mathe-x 
matics  and  Physics — the  sciences  of  pure  quantity  or  measure- 
ment. The  moment  that  differences  of  quality  appear,  com- 
putation and  measurement  lose  their  value,  and  demonstrative 
proof  becomes  impossible.  Hence  in  all  the  sciences,  except 
Mathematics  and  Physics,  there  exists  a  purely  conjectural  or 
empirical  element.  We  must  wait  on  events;  our  process  must 
be  a  posteriori,  prediction  and  certainty  are  impossible.  The 
province  of  the  ratiocinating  intelligence  is  thus  limited.  And 
it  is  manifest  that  the  facts  of  man's  spirit,  that  is,  of  morality 
and  religion,  where  conceptions  of  value,  worth  or  goodness 
are  of  primary  importance,  fall  outside  its  boundaries. 

This  view  will  not  bear  investigation.  It  implies  a  wrong 
notion  of  proof.  It  overlooks  the  fact  that  there  is  proof 
wherever  there  is  systematic  coherence  and  existential  interde- 
pendence.^ But  at  present  I  shall  merely  observe  that  a  truth 
omitted  from  any  system,  or  a  quality  overlooked  in  any  fact, 
batters  it  from  without.    The  theory  is  exposed  as  false  and  the 

^See  the  author's  Lotze. 


26  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

fact  as  an  illusion:  they  have  only  the  doubtful  value  of  frag- 
ments. The  omitted  aspect  or  quality,  so  long  as  it  is  not 
allowed  to  enter  into  and  take  its  own  place  as  an  element 
within  the  doctrine  or  system,  is  a  vital  objection  to  it  and  a 
constant  condemnation  of  it. 

The  necessities  of  the  intelligence  are  thus,  in  the  last  resort, 
the  same  as  those  of  morality  and  religion.  The  True  and  The 
Good  make  the  same  claim  to  systematic  wholeness:  that  is 
to  say,  the  former  must  make  room  for  all  facts  and  the  latter 
for  all  values.  Neither  can  stop  short  of  the  absolute.  It  is 
not  a  moral  one-sidedness,  however  pre-eminent,  that  can  satisfy 
— a  justice  that  is  not  also  mercy,  a  kindness  or  generosity 
that  is  not  just.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  virtues  at  their  best 
not  only  hold  hands,  but,  as  Plato  shows,  pass  into  one  another. 
Temperance  will  turn  under  our  very  hands  into  courage, 
courage  into  wisdom,  and  any  or  all  of  them  into  unselfish 
regard  for  one's  neighbour  and  service  of  the  State.  And  vices, 
I  need  hardly  say,  pass  into  and  generate  one  another  in  the 
same  way.  This  is  inevitable.  For  the  virtues  are  manifesta- 
tions of  the  same  ultimate  principle,  are  elements  within  the 
same  whole,  and  therefore  are  only  by  help  of  one  another. 
Now,  the  principle  which  is  ultimate  for  morality  is  the  perfect 
Good  by  which  religion  holds ;  and  it  is  also  the  absolutely  self- 
explaining  and  self-determining  reality  which  the  intelligence 
demands.  It  is  that  in  which  all  things  subsist.  The  intelli- 
gence cannot,  nor  should  it  find  rest,  except  in  assured  knowl- 
edge of  that  principle.  And  natural  science,  as  it  comes  to  its 
own,  will  be  less  and  less  liable  to  omit  to  refer  its  phenomena 
to  it  for  their  final  explanation.  Science  also  will  make,  more 
and  more  directly,  for  wholeness — for  knowledge  of  that  which 
is  self-determining  and  self-sufficient,  and  which  manifests  itself 
in  the  facts  of  experience.  And  I  believe  it  will  find  that 
principle  of  Wholeness,  of  self-determining,  self-justifying  real- 
ity, that  neither  has,  nor  needs,  a  "Beyond"  in  the  conception 
of  Spirit.  In  other  words,  I  believe  that  the  time  is  coming 
when  convincing  testimony  to  the  spiritual  nature  of  realit}'  will 
be  borne  by  the  Sciences  (merely  "natural"  no  longer). 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  27 

At  present  there  are  two  main  witnesses  to  this  wholeness  of 
reality,  namely  Philosophy  and  Religion.  They  are  not,  they 
cannot  for  a  moment  afford  to  be,  abstract.  But  in  their  own 
way  they  are  not  less  prone  to  be  abstract  than  are  the  natural 
sciences.  Only  the  aspect  or  element  which  they  are  tempted 
to  ignore  or  obscure,  or  even  overlook,  is  a  different  one.  They 
are  apt  to  forget  that  spiritual  facts  are  not  real  except  when 
they  are  exemplified  or  realized  in  the  things  and  events  of 
time.  The  moral  world  is  spoken  of  as  if  it  had  a  separate  and 
independent  existence:  Religion  is  made  an  affair  of  the  other 
life.  Their  natural  aspect  is  taken  to  be  a  mere  garb,  which 
they  can  put  on  or  off  and  do  without.  But  the  moral  world 
must  be  sustained  by  continued  volition.  There  is  no  knowl- 
edge but  only  knowing.  A  spiritual  principle  which  is  not 
active,  either  in  our  conduct  or  our  reflexion,  is  a  non-entity. 
The  merely  spiritual  is  as  genuine  an  abstraction  as  the  merely 
natural ;  nor,  as  I  may  try  to  show  later,  is  the  relation  between 
them  external  or  contingent.  The  devout  who  stand  aloof 
from  temporal  concerns,  like  many  devotees  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church  in  times  past,  are  committing  as  real  a  blunder 
as  those  who  overlook  the  spiritual  meanings  in  the  secular 
opportunities  of  life.  And  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  the 
error  of  forgetting  that  spirit  in  order  to  be  real,  or  that  princi- 
ples, whether  of  morality,  religion  or  knowledge,  must  be  ex- 
emplified in  temporal  facts,  is  a  no  less  disastrous  error  than 
that  of  the  sciences  which  have  not  learnt  that  the  natural, 
when  all  the  meaning  of  it  is  set  free,  blossoms  into  the  spir- 
itual like  the  tree  into  flower.  Religion  and  philosophy  and 
science  also  have  yet  to  learn  more  fully  that  all  which  can 
possibly  concern  man,  occupy  his  intelligence  or  engage  his 
will,  lies  at  the  point  of  intersection  of  the  natural  and  spir- 
itual. But  this  is  to  anticipate  matters.  What  concerns  us 
and  has  led  us  thus  far  is  the  fact  that  the  matter  of  a  system 
of  knowledge  determines  the  method  of  enquiry;  and  so  long 
as  the  sciences  treat  facts  as  merely  natural,  and  philosophy 
and  religion  do  not  follow  out  "the  application"  of  their  princi- 
ples in  temporal  particulars,  their  methods  must  be  both  de- 


28  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

fective  and  different.  The  contrast  between  secular  and  sacred 
facts  must  be  exposed  in  all  its  falsity,  and  their  unity  accen- 
tuated. In  other  words  (from  opposite  directions,  in  a  sense), 
both  natural  science  and  the  philosophy  of  religion  must  extend 
their  claims.  Neither  can  find  rest  in  abstraction,  nor  should 
they  seek  it  there.  Their  theme  is  at  once  secular  and  sacred; 
they  have  to  deal  with  principles  that  are  at  once  ultimate 
and,  if  you  like,  timeless,  and  which  also  embody  and  actualize 
themselves  in  temporal  events. 

We  have  now  to  justify  this  view.  We  must  ask  with  more 
relentless  purpose  than  hitherto,  what  is  the  real  or  constitutive 
character  of  religious  facts?  Are  they  knowable?  And  are 
they  knowable  by  methods  analogous  to  those  of  natural 
science  ? 

At  first  sight  it  would  seem  that  no  satisfying  answer  can 
be  found ;  religion  has  had  such  diverse  and  even  contradictory 
meanings,  and  has  played  such  different  parts  in  man's  history. 
Any  attempt  at  expressing  its  character  in  a  definition  seems 
to  be  doomed  to  fail.  "Whatever  element  be  named  as  essential 
to  religion,"  says  Edward  Caird,  "it  seems  easy  to  oppose  a 
negative  instance  to  it."  There  are  religions  of  love,  and  re- 
ligions of  hate,  and  religions  of  indifference.  There  are 
religions  whose  Gods  are  helpers  of  man,  and  there  are  religions 
whose  Gods  can  be  hindered  from  destroying  him  only  if 
they  can  be  propitiated  by  mystic  ceremonies  and  bloody  sac- 
rifices. The  Gods  have  been  regarded  as  human  in  all  things, 
except  that  they  are  fairer  in  form  and  greater  in  strength  and 
stature,  and  that  whatever  they  do  is  right.  On  the  other  hand, 
man,  it  is  alleged,  has  found  his  Gods  in  plants  and  animals 
and  even  in  stocks  and  stones  and  the  things  most  opposite  to 
himself.  And  there  are  religions  without  any  Gods  at  all. 
Even  in  our  own  times  and  in  regard  to  the  Christian  religion, 
we  have  the  greatest  diversity  of  view.  Our  religious  beliefs 
were  too  anthropomorphic  for  Herbert  Spencer ;  they  were  not 
anthropomorphic  enough  for  Goethe.  Our  philosophers  are 
divided  as  to  whether  God  is  or  is  not  the  Absolute,  and  in 
cither  case,  as  to  whether  he  is  or  is  not  a  person.     And  they 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  29 

are  happy  neither  in  the  denial  nor  in  the  affirmation  of  his 
perfection.  Few  of  them  can  tolerate  an  imperfect  God — none 
would  attempt  to  acquiesce  in  the  notion  could  they  otherwise 
admit  and  account  for  the  reality  of  evil.  On  the  other  hand, 
to  affirm  his  perfection  seems  to  imply  his  changelessness,  and 
the  changeless  must  be  inactive.  But  a  God  conceived  as  a 
static  absolute  cannot  do  anything,  and  is  as  little  satisfactory 
as  a  God  who  is  limited  and  imperfect. 

In  such  circumstances  doubt  as  to  the  truth  and  value  of 
religion,  and  even  as  to  its  meaning,  is  more  than  legitimate. 
It  is  inevitable.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  amidst  all  these  mis- 
cellaneous meanings  and  doubtful  uses,  religion  has  had  some 
characters  which  are  no  less  universal  than  they  are  unique. 
Let  us  glance  at  two  of  these.  Religion  has  always  impassioned 
the  spirit  of  man,  and  added  consequence  to  the  things  which 
it  sanctions  or  condemns.  It  concentrates  man's  faculties, 
rouses  them  to  the  uttermost  exercise  of  their  power,  excludes 
hesitation  and  expels  alternatives.  Not  only  does  it  possess 
the  whole  man,  but  it  leads  him  onward  under  the  belief  that 
the  ultimate  forces  of  his  world  are  at  his  back.  Hence,  when 
he  acts  "in  the  name"  of  religion  he  knows  neither  inner  nor 
outer  restraint.  The  impelling,  propulsive  power  of  religion 
is  supreme:    the  passions  are  at  its  service. 

But  the  direction  which  religion  will  take  in  the  exercise  of 
its  power  is  uncertain.  It  has  proved  a  supreme  force  in  the 
ways  both  of  reason  and  of  unreason.  It  has  been  the  most 
sane  and  equilibrating  power  in  man's  history,  teaching  him, 
as  nothing  else  can,  the  relative  values  of  ends  and  ways  of  life : 
it  has  also  proved  the  most  extravagant,  uncontrolled,  and  I 
am  tempted  to  add,  the  most  insane  of  all  forces.'  What  rites 
and  ceremonies  have  not  been  inspired  by  it,  what  articles  of 
faith  has  it  not  represented  as  final  and  saving  truths,  and 
what  ways  of  conduct  has  it  not  both  commanded  and  forbid- 
den !  ^     The  deeds  which  man  has  done  when  roused  by  his 

^Because  religion  impassions  behaviour  it  has  been  defined  as  "morahty 
touched  with  emotion."  That  its  relation  to  morality  is  more  fundamental  is 
one  of  the  convictions  I  shall  try  to  prove. 

-Vide  James's   Varieties  of  Religious  Experience. 


so  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

religion — done  in  the  name  and  for  the  sake  of  it,  and  with  a 
rampant  certainty  of  doing  what  is  right — are  amongst  the 
darkest  in  his  history,  appalling  in  their  crudity  and  cruelty. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  lives  of  religious  men  and  women  have 
surpassed  all  description  in  their  spiritual  splendour — their  gen- 
tleness, their  wisdom,  their  courage,  and  in  the  spendthrift 
magnificence  of  their  ministering  love.  If,  on  the  one  side,  no 
kind  of  selfishness  or  evil  passion  and  purpose  has  created  such 
a  destructive  dispeace  amongst  the  nations  of  the  earth  as  re- 
ligion has;  on  the  other  side  it  has  broken  out  into  principles 
of  conduct  which  have  united  men  so  that  they  live  in  and  by 
means  of  one  another.  It  has  linked  the  generations  together 
in  the  continuous  and  growing  experience  of  stable,  and  more 
or  less,  civilized  societies.  For  human  society  is  welded,  not 
by  needs  nor  by  economical  but  by  ethical  principles,  which 
operate  even  when  little  understood ;  and  the  ultimate  ground 
of  these  principles  we  shall,  I  think,  find  is  religion.  Neverthe- 
less, it  must  be  recognized  that  amidst  all  these  discrepant  and 
mutually  destructive  practical  effects  of  religion,  its  feature 
of  intensifying  human  interests  remains. 

But  the  fact  that  religion  intensifies  human  interests,  giving 
them  a  significance  that  is  often  extravagant  and  new,  does 
not  remove  it  from  amongst  the  subjects  amenable  to  scientific 
treatment.  It  really  constitutes  a  more  urgent  need  of  it. 
Nevertheless,  it  does  result  in  establishing  a  contrast  between 
the  religious  and  secular  life  which  tends  to  arrest  science  at 
the  entrance  of  the  religious  domain.  That  contrast,  I  am  of 
opinion,  is  not  only  general  but  universal.  It  varies  indefinitely 
in  depth,  but  it  does  not  alwaj^s  amount  to  direct  antagonism. 
There  are  religions  in  which  it  almost  disappears.  The  Greek 
passed  to  and  fro  between  the  secular  and  sacred  domains  most 
smoothly,  and  was  on  very  familiar  terms  with  his  gods  and 
goddesses.  The  Greek  spirit  was  artistic,  and  for  that  spirit 
there  must  exist  a  complete  equipoise  of  inner  meaning  and 
outward  expression,  of  soul  and  body,  of  mind  and  matter. 
The  Greek  deities  were  in  consequence  simply  men  and  women 
of  greater  strength  and  beauty,  and  except  for  the  ceremonial 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  31 

observances  they  exacted,  hardly  superior  to  the  Greek  himself. 
But  for  the  Israelite  a  chasm  yawned  between  religious  and 
ordinary  concerns.  Unlimited  awe  and  reverence  entered  the 
soul,  and  a  depth  of  devotion  and  contrition  hardly  intelligible 
to  the  Gentile  world.  It  is  the  Israelite  rather  than  the  Greek 
civilization  which  reveals  and  exemplifies  the  nature  of  religion. 
For,  however  true  it  may  be  that  the  contrast  of  the  secular 
and  sacred  must  in  the  last  resort  disappear,  or  that,  in  other 
words,  nothing  must  prove  finally  "secular"  or  "unclean,"  still 
religion  cannot  reveal  its  true  character  except  where  that  con- 
trast emerges  and  obtains  full  expression.  Finite  concerns  and 
ends  must  be  tried  and  be  found  to  fail,  and  even  to  betray 
those  who  trust  in  them.  Human  civilization,  it  seems  to  me, 
must  exhaust  the  uses  of  the  finite  ends  before  it  is  dedicated 
to  the  Best.  When  man  turns  to  religion,  he  turns  his  back 
upon  the  world  and  all  that  the  world  can  offer,  as  upon  that 
which  has  proved  worthless.  It  is  not  a  difference  of  degree, 
or  of  quantity  of  any  kind,  that  at  first  distinguishes  the  secular 
and  sacred.  It  is,  as  I  shall  trj^  to  show,  the  contrast  of  the 
finite  and  the  infinite.  The  inadequacy  of  the  finite  must  be 
more  than  a  mere  conjecture.  Nevertheless,  room  must  be  left 
for  it.  Man  must  be  allowed  "to  stand  on  his  own  pin-point 
rock,"  live  his  own  life,  go  his  own  way,  make  his  own  choice, 
discover  the  good  for  himself.  The  value  and  the  power  of 
religion  are  revealed  by  the  strength  of  the  resistance  which  it 
overcomes,  by  the  range  of  the  secular  interests  which  it  trans- 
mutes; and  its  authority  is  complete  only  when  it  is  recognized 
by  the  free. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  solution  of  the  contrast  must  be  as 
complete  as  the  contrast  is  direct  and  explicit:  in  other  words, 
religion  must  penetrate  and  inform  the  whole  of  life.  I  must 
confess  that  religion  loses  its  value  for  me  if  its  presence  and 
power  are  not  made  good  everywhere  in  man's  daily  behaviour, 
in  the  social  powers  which  play  within  him  and  around  him, 
and  even  in  the  natural  world  which  is  also  bone  of  his  bone 
and  flesh  of  his  flesh.  It  must  not  merely  be  present,  as  one 
thing  amongst  many:     it  must  be  their  truest   meaning  and 


32  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

highest  worth.  This  religious  faith,  or  view,  or  hypothesis,  is, 
I  believe,  that  in  the  light  of  which  alone  the  universe  is  left 
a  cosmos  and  not  a  chaos,  and  man's  life  therein  a  growing 
splendour  and  not  a  farce  too  tragical  for  tears. 

Now,  it  is  the  business  of  the  science  or  philosophy  of  re- 
ligion to  prove  this  hypothesis,  or  substantiate  this  faith;  that 
is,  they  must  demonstrate  the  universality  of  the  presence  and 
power  of  the  Best  we  know.  They  must  show  that  what  is 
most  perfect  is  also  most  real;  that  in  the  language  of  religion 
God  is,  and  is  perfect  in  power  and  goodness,  and  in  the  lan- 
guage of  philosophy,  that  the  rational  is  the  real.  They  must 
seek  and  find  the  ultimate  meaning,  worth  and  reality  that 
express  themselves  in  a  world  which  seems  at  first  to  consist 
of  contradictory  appearances  and  nothing  more. 

One  of  the  things  that  I  would  accentuate  and  make  de- 
cisively clear  is  that  in  this  matter  there  can  be  no  compromise 
in  which  either  believers  or  unbelievers  may  take  refuge.  No 
ultimate  law  or  principle  can  be  operative  only  occasionally. 
To  maintain  that  God  is  Good  now  and  then,  and  present  and 
operative  here  and  there,  or  that  order  rules  the  universe  at 
times  and  in  certain  spots,  while  elsewhere  contingencies  are 
rampant  and  particulars  run  amok — all  this  seems  to  me  as 
foolish  as  to  say  that  2  X  2  is  4  now  and  then  on  certain  days 
and  in  certain  places.  Both  the  theory  and  the  practice  of 
religion  demand  for  it  sovereign  authority  and  an  unlimited 
domain.^ 

It  is  not  true  that  there  are  some  religious  and  some  irre- 
ligious, non-religious  or  secular  facts;  or  that  any  choice  is 
made  as  to  who  shall  receive  and  who  shall  be  denied  the  ex- 
perience of  the  value  of  the  former.  Every  man  who  is  re- 
sponsible, and  the  being  who  is  not  responsible  is  (for  our 
purpose  at  least)  not  a  man,  is  according  to  the  extent  of  his 
responsibility  capable  of  finding  or  missing  spiritual  meanings 
at  every  step  of  his  way  of  life.  The  flowers  of  the  field,  the 
birds  of  the  air,  the  whole  panorama  of  colour  and  form,  the 

^For  a  fuller  criticism  of  Pluralism  see  Rice  Institute  Pamt^lilct,  1915,  the 
author's  lectures  on  Philosophical  Landmarks. 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  33 

music  of  the  winds  and  waves,  and  the  meaning  that  lies  at 
the  heart  of  all  things  are  to  him  that  hath  ears  to  hear  wit- 
nesses to  the  goodness  of  God  and  his  care  for  man.  There 
is  no  spot  of  earth  anywhere  that  is  not  holy  ground,  and  no 
bush  that  does  not  burn,  where  a  leader  of  men  may  not  meet 
the  Best  he  knows  and  receive  the  message  of  his  God.  And 
if  he  cannot  directly  trace  the  presence  of  God  in  the  incidents 
of  man's  sinful  life,  he  may  find  hints  of  it  in  the  misery  that 
sin  brings  on  the  world,  and  in  the  revolt  of  his  own  soul 
against  injustice,  cruelty,  debauchery,  in  others,  and  above  all 
in  himself. 

I  am  loath,  indeed,  to  admit  that  God  reveals  what  is  vital 
to  some  and  not  to  others,  and  reveals  only  by  the  rare  and 
doubtful  methods  of  dreams  and  visions  and  ancient  books 
and  stoled  officials.  His  revelation  is  universal — all  around, 
always  and  everywhere — open  to  every  one  all  the  time,  or 
else  it  does  not  exist,  except  as  a  fiction  of  a  pious  imagination. 
Standing  in  its  place,  as  a  part  of  the  world's  context,  there 
is  no  fact  and  no  event  that  is  not  a  proof  of  and  a  witness 
to  the  universal  rational  order.  And  a  rational  order  must  be 
a  benevolent  order  whose  principle  is  Love. 

Does  the  presence  or  absence  of  religion  then  make  no  dif- 
ference, seeing  that  all  facts  are  capable  of  either  a  material 
or  spiritual  interpretation,  according  to  the  presuppositions  of 
the  interpreter,  or  indeed  of  no  interpretation  at  all,  but  remain 
mere  puzzles?  On  the  contrary  it  makes  the  same  kind  of 
difference  as  the  presence  or  absence  of  light  to  a  looker-on  at 
the  outer  world,  or  the  transparency  of  the  window  of  his  soul. 
A  converted  man,  as  a  rule,  re-interprets  every  incident  in 
his  past  life,  and  re-values  every  fact  and  purpose,  setting  them 
in  quite  a  new  order  of  preference.  Love  for  the  Good,  the 
unconditional  and  final  Good,  which  religion  is,  like  all  love, 
finds  rare  values  in  some  apparently  very  small  facts,  and  on 
the  other  hand  shuts  out  what  is  a  whole  world  for  others  as 
being  of  no  consequence. 

Religion  is  a  new  point  of  view.  Taking  his  stand  upon  it, 
man,  possibly  for  the  first  time,  surveys  the  whole  expanse  of 


34,  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

his  life,  and  contemplates  the  distant  horizon,  where  the  conse- 
quences of  his  deeds  and  thoughts,  and  the  meaning  of  it  all, 
dip  out  of  sight.  Within  that  scene,  regarded  from  a  new 
direction,  every  fact  and  incident  stands  in  a  new  perspective. 
That  which  was  near,  distinct,  urgent,  is  now  far,  vague  and 
of  the  least  significance ;  and  that  which  was  remote,  and  vague, 
and  negligible — the  moral  use  of  circumstances,  the  spiritual 
opportunities  of  life,  the  chance  of  serving  one's  fellows,  and 
the  possibility  of  trusting  God  more  fully  and  loving  him 
with  more  devoted  loyalty — these  now  are  all  in  all. 

At  first  it  seems  a  little  thing  to  say  of  religion  that  it  is  a 
new  point  of  view.     But 

"Belief   or   unbelief 
Bears  upon  life,  determines  its  whole  course." 

It  is  indeed  the  one  thing  that  signifies:  for  a  man  lives  his 
beliefs  however  much  he  may  betraj'  his  creed.  Nay,  I  am 
not  sure  that  it  is  not  misleading  to  insist  on  the  absolute 
newness  of  anything.  It  is  possible  that  religion  is  not  so 
much  an  introduction  of  new  facts  as  a  new  light  upon  the 
familiar  facts  of  the  previous  secular  life.  It  is  not  new 
except  in  a  limited  sense — in  the  same  sense  as  the  conclusion 
which  follows  from  premisses  is  new,  or  an  intuition  that 
springs  from  experience,  or  a  bud  that  breaks  out  on  a  flower- 
ing plant.  It  is  an  improved  interpretation  of  the  meaning 
of  life.  It  comes  from  him  "Who  is  the  light  of  all  our  see- 
ing." And  a  greater  miracle  than  "the  nature  of  things"  or 
a  more  illuminative  revelation  than  the  operation  of  its  never- 
failing  laws  man  need  not  desire.  It  is  not  a  change  of  scene 
that  religion  brings.  It  opens  the  eyes  of  the  looker-on.  He 
discovers  what  was  there  already.  The  ordinary  facts  of  his 
daily  life  whisper  new  meanings  to  him  as  he  moves  amongst 
them,  while  their  outer  aspects  remain  just  the  same.  Not  that 
the  slumber  of  the  secular  spirit  is  ever  quite  peaceful.  Man  is 
moved  on  from  circumstance  to  circumstance  unceasingly,  and 
he  himself  is  always  passing  through  change  to  change.  New 
demands  are  ever  being  made  upon  him,  and  these  call  upon 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  36 

him  to  awake.  As  life  lengthens,  the  calls  become  clearer. 
Trials  thicken,  shallow  joys  grow  pale,  man  becomes  more  re- 
flective. Instead  of  seeking  new  enterprises  in  the  world  with- 
out, the  experiences  he  has  himself  passed  through  engage  his 
thoughts  more  and  more,  and  he  would  fain  discern  more 
clearly  what  they  all  mean.  Ends  that  wxre  his  gods  turn  into 
idols  of  wood  and  stone,  and  he  can  worship  them  no  longer: 
and  he  knows  now  that  things  that  seemed  treasures  are  apt 
to  change  into  trinkets.  He  yearns  for  a  reliable  good  that 
will  stand  the  weather.  On  the  other  hand,  the  soul  given 
to  little  deeds  of  kindness  and  the  unobtrusive  habits  of  a  gentle 
life  may  find  a  growing  good  in  man  and  a  new  benevolence 
in  the  world  that  make  the  religion  which  was  latent  in  his 
moral  life  explicit.  The  music  may  become  audible.  So,  as 
Browning  shows  in  a  passage  which  cannot  be  quoted  too  often, 
the  spirits  which  neglect  or  deny  the  highest  are  rarely  at  rest 
or  safe.    They  ask; 

"How  can  we  guard  our  unbelief, 
Make  it  bear  fruit  to  us?   .    .    . 
Just  when  we  are  safest,  there'3  a  sunset-touch, 
A  fancy  from  a  flower-bell,  someone's  death, 
A  chorus-ending  from  Euripides — 
And  that's  enough  for  fifty  hopes  and  fears 
As  old  and  new  at  once  as  nature's  self, 
To  rap  and  knock  and  enter  in  our  soul, 
Take  hands  and  dance  there  a  fantastic  ring, 
Round  the  ancient  idol,  on  his  base  again, — 
The  grand  Perhaps."  ^ 

The  "Perhaps"  of  religion  is  so  magnificent,  if  it  is  true: 
for  it  gives  new  worth  to  everything!  While,  without  it,  life 
is  at  best  petty,  its  interests  are  shallow,  and  it  passes  away 
so  soon!  Indifference  as  to  the  truth  of  this  "Perhaps"  is  not 
easy  for  man,  and  it  is  not  wise. 

*Bishop  Blougram's  Apology,   p.   269. 


LECTURE    IV 

THE  CONTRAST  OF  THE   FINITE  AND  INFINITE 

Perhaps  a  glance  at  the  road  along  which  we  have  travelled 
may  be  of  some  use  at  this  stage. 

We  have  been  asking  whether  Religion  is,  or  is  not,  capable 
of  being  treated  by  the  methods  of  natural  science.  This, 
we  believe,  is  precisely  the  problem  with  which  Lord  Gifford 
desired  that  the  lectures  should  deal.  It  meant  to  him,  as  it 
usually  does  to  others:  first,  the  question  whether  the  objects 
with  which  Religion  has  to  do  are  real  or  illusions ;  and  second, 
whether  they  can  be  proved  to  be  real,  and  whether  their  nature 
can  be  explained  by  the  methods  which  have  been  so  convinc- 
ingly successful  in  the  sciences. 

As  to  the  reality  of  the  facts  there  is  the  greatest  diversity 
of  opinion.  Religious  believers  say  that  they  are  real,  and  real 
in  a  deeper  and  fuller  sense  than  any  other  facts.  Sceptics  say 
that  they  are  the  fictitious  creations  of  man's  fears  and  hopes, 
and  the  most  persistent  and  powerful  of  all  his  illusions. 
Agnostics  profess  to  offer  no  opinion,  either  positive  or  negative, 
on  the  ground  that  man  can  never  find  any  adequate  reasons 
for  either  affirmation  or  denial.  Their  intention  is  to  refrain 
from  both  affirmation  and  negation ;  and  were  their  agnosticism 
thorough  and  self-consistent  both  affirmation  and  denial  would 
be  seen  to  be  out  of  place.  What  they  profess  to  do  is  simply 
to  suspend  judgment.  But  that  is  equivalent  to  assuming  no 
attitude  of  mind  at  all.  Hence,  the  only  verdict  that  agnosti- 
cism really  invites  is  that  it  should  be  ignored  altogether,  or 
that  it  should  count  as  what  it  professes  to  be,  namely,  a  wit- 
ness that  testifies  to  nothing.     But  the  practical  effect  of  agnos- 

36 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  37 

ticism,  so  far  from  being  negligible,  is  the  worst  kind  of  re- 
ligious denial,  namely,  that  which  follows  from  indifference, 
from  shutting  religion  outside  of  both  the  contemplative  and 
the  practical  life. 

Now,  while  there  is  thus  the  widest  difference  of  opinion  as 
to  the  reality  of  the  facts,  there  is  a  curious  unanimity  as  to 
the  needlessness  or  uselessness  of  all  the  demonstrative  methods 
of  the  intellect  in  the  domain  of  religious  phenomena.  The 
facts  for  the  believer  are  matters  of  faith,  that  is  (usually) 
of  a  faith  that  is  held  not  to  be  indebted  to  reason,  nor  to  rest 
on  proof.  Scepticism,  again,  as  a  rule  if  not  even  always,  is 
deaf  to  the  bnpUcations  of  the  finite;  and  resting  its  case  on 
sheer  particulars  (just  as  if  their  context  did  not  enter  into 
their  constitution),  rarely  takes  the  trouble  to  disprove  the  opin- 
ions it  condemns,  and  never  exposes  the  positive  basis  of  its 
own  denial.  The  attitude  of  the  Agnostic  we  have  just  con- 
sidered. And  the  combined  result  of  the  low  value  thus  set 
upon  demonstrative  knowledge  in  this  region  by  believers, 
sceptics  and  agnostics  alike,  is  a  placid  secularism  of  spirit  that 
limits  the  issues  of  life  and  narrows  its  horizon.  But  no  graver 
injury  can  be  done  to  man  than  to  limit  the  range  of  his  fears 
and  hopes.  We  can  admit  readily  that  there  have  been  foolish 
and  noxious  faiths  in  this  world  of  ours,  but  without  faith 
nothing  greater  was  ever  done  or  even  attempted. 

As  to  the  application  of  scientific  method  of  enquiry  to  re- 
ligion, w^e  found  that  the  natural  sciences,  so  far  from  having 
one  method,  have  many.  Every  science  has  its  own  method; 
for  the  method  that  can  be  fruitfully  employed  depends  upon 
the  aspect  of  reality,  or  the  matter  which  is  investigated. 
There  is  no  more  prolific  source  of  utterly  bafHing  problems — 
the  problems  which  men  call  insoluble  and  which  they  make 
into  a  ground  for  insisting  on  the  incompetence  of  human  in- 
telligence— than  the  use  in  one  province  of  methods  that  are 
effective  in  another,  where  facts  are  of  another  kind.  In  short, 
the  use  of  the  wrong  method,  so  far  from  explaining  facts, 
distorts  them  and  makes  them  unintelligible. 

Now  the  subject  matter  of  the  natural  sciences  is  finite,  that 


38  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

of  religion  infinite.  In  other  words,  ordinary  or  secular  experi- 
ence deals  with  nothing  that  is  ultimate  or  final,  while  it  is  the 
nature  of  religion  to  deal  with  naught  else.  The  secular  life, 
the  natural  life  perhaps  I  should  say,  in  obedience  to  and  ex- 
tension of  the  law  of  self-maintenance,  is  always  seeking  what 
appears  good,  and  moves  on  in  the  pursuit  of  a  better.  It 
substitutes  one  finite  end  for  another.  But  religion,  even  when 
crude  and  rudimentary,  is  a  pursuit  (and  therefore  a  posses- 
sion) not  of  a  Better  but  of  the  Best.  No  doubt  that  "best," 
whether  of  a  man  or  an  age  or  even  a  race,  may  be  a  poor 
thing.  Conceptions  of  absoluteness  and  finality  of  worth  may 
be  most  inadequate;  nevertheless,  such  as  they  are,  they  are 
operative  in  all  spiritual  or  truly  human  life.  And  man  always 
gives  the  name  of  "God"  to  his  "best."  He  worships  it,  adores 
it,  and  even  serves  it  in  some  fashion  or  another. 

Now  the  conception  of  "the  Best"  implies,  as  we  shall  see,  a 
reality  that  is  the  source  of  its  own  perfections,  and  the  cause 
and  guarantee  of  all  forms  of  good ;  and  the  suspicion  naturally 
arises  that  man  in  professing  to  know,  to  serve,  nay  to  be  one 
with  a  reality  of  that  kind,  having  made  it  into  his  God,  the 
object  of  his  contemplation  and  the  goal  of  his  desires,  has 
forgotten  his  own  littleness.  Carlyle  has  given  expression  to 
this  suspicion  in  his  Sartor.  His  "Shoeblack"  remains  dissatis- 
fied though  he  were  given  "half  a  Universe  of  an  Omnipotence" 
all  to  himself,  because  there  is  "an  infinite  in  him"  which,  for 
satisfaction,  desires  and  demands  an  infinite  object.  But  in- 
stead of  satisfying  the  demand  Carlyle  suggests  as  a  remedy 
that  man  should  limit  his  desires.  Let  him  get  rid  of  his  self- 
conceit,  form  a  better  notion  of  his  pettiness  and  a  truer  view 
of  his  deserts;  then  he  will  reduce  his  claims.  "Fancy  that 
thou  deservest  to  be  hanged  (as  is  most  likely),  thou  wilt  feel 
it  happiness  to  be  only  shot:  fancy  that  thou  deservest  to  be 
hanged  in  a  hair-halter,  it  will  be  a  luxury  to  die  in  hemp." 

This  is  a  good  example  of  Carlyle's  humorous  extravagance, 
but  it  conveys  his  serious  meaning.  His  cardinal  remedy  for 
man's  unhappiness  is  to  limit  his  aspirations  and  reduce  his 
claims.     "The  fraction  of  Life  can  be  increased  in  value  not 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  39 

so  much  by  increasing  your  numerator  as  by  lessening  your  de- 
nominator. Nay,  unless  my  Algebra  deceive  me,  Unity  itself 
divided  by  Zero  will  give  Infinity.  Make  thy  claim  of  visages 
zero,  then ;  thou  hast  the  world  under  thy  feet.  Well  did  the 
Wisest  of  our  time  write  'It  is  only  with  Renunciation 
{Entsagen)  that  Life,  properly  speaking,  can  be  said  to 
begin.'  " 

Now  Carlyle's  remedy,  unless  the  whole  direction  of  my 
thinking  on  philosophy  and  religion  is  wrong,  runs  directly 
counter  to  both,  and  betrays  man's  highest,  and  truly  human, 
interests.  Nothing  can,  and  nothing  ought  to  satisfy  man 
except  that  which  meets  the  claims  of  his  nature:  and  what 
his  nature  claims,  as  we  have  seen,  is  the  Best,  the  absolutely 
self-sufficient,  the  Good  that  knows  no  limit.  The  Entsagung 
which  Carlyle  approves  is  a  negation  taken  by  itself  as  com- 
plete. The  Entsagung  which  has  value  is  both  an  aspect  and 
a  result  of  the  discovery  of  the  infinite  fulness  as  well  as  the 
infinite  want  of  it.  As  a  mere  negative,  standing  by  itself, 
self-denial  has  no  ethical  value:  Asceticism  can  not  be  justified 
as  an  end  in  itself. 

The  truth  is  that  Religion  invites  man  to  enlarge  his  claims. 
Its  dominant  conception  is  self-realization.  So  far  from  limit- 
ing man's  aspirations  or  narrowing  his  outlook  or  lowering  his 
demands,  it  teaches  that  nothing  can,  or  is  meant  to  suit  or 
satisfy  him  except  that  Highest,  which  is  also  Best.  In  one 
word.  Religion  reveals  to  man  that  he  needs  God,  and  to  know 
the  need  of  God  is  to  find  him,  and  to  find  God  is  to  find  what 
secures  every  final  value.  Religion  is  characterized  by  a  radi- 
cal resistance  to  limitation.  And  philosophy,  I  believe,  when 
most  true  and  positive,  is  the  process  by  which  reason  sub- 
stantiates the  main  hypothesis  of  religion  and  furnishes  a 
rational  basis  for  man's  infinite  claims,  making  him  no  doubt 
a  pilgrim  on  a  road  that  leads  to  a  very  far  city.  But  the  way 
is,  at  every  step,  a  way  of  life. 

Now,  one  result  of  the  impatience  of  limits  which  character- 
izes religion  is  that  it  often  takes  the  form  of  Mysticism.  In- 
stead of  the  Infinite,  men  worship  the  Indefinite.     And  this 


40  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

Indefinite  means  that  which  resists  all  definition,  and  is  either 
"Unknowable,"  or  else  has  the  single  known  characteristic  of 
being  other  than  entirely  exclusive  of  and  excluded  by  and 
different  and  isolated  from  everything  finite :  in  short,  it  is  the 
not-finite.  It  has  always  struck  me  that  to  call  the  Unknow- 
able "God"  is  a  masterpiece  of  confused  thinking:  any  other 
name  would  fit  just  as  well,  and  no  name  is  really  possible. 
But  what  is  meant  is,  that  whatever  else  the  Infinite  may  be 
it  is  not  anything  known  by  minds  which,  we  are  told,  can 
know  only  the  finite,  and  which  must  limit  all  that  they  do 
know.  In  other  words,  we  can  be  sure  of  only  one  thing:  the 
Infinite  is  quite  other  than  the  finite.  It  is  "Beyond."  It  is 
different  from  all  that  we  do  or  ever  can  know,  and,  it  is 
easily  presumed,  surpasses  it,  and  is  all  the  more  fit  to  be  an 
object  of  worship  on  that  account.  Religion  takes  the  form 
of  devout  Agnosticism. 

Another  result  of  this  yearning  after  the  perfect,  the  infinite, 
erroneously  interpreted  as  the  indefinite,  or  the  not-finite,  is 
the  quarrel  between  science  and  religion,  or,  as  it  is  usually 
expressed,  between  the  intellect  and  the  heart.  The  intellect 
in  the  service  of  the  systematic  sciences  distinguishes  and  de- 
fines. In  doing  so  it  appears  to  discover,  set  forth  and  fix 
limits.  One  fact  or  feature  of  a  fact  seems  to  be  set  apart  over 
against  all  others  as  a  distinct  and  separate  object,  standing 
outside,  or  in  relations  that  are  exclusive  to  all  other  objects. 
If  the  intellect  in  defining  and  distinguishing  inevitably  estab- 
lishes relations  between  the  objects  that  it  defines  and  dis- 
tinguishes, these  relations  must  be  external.  They  do  not 
enter  into  or  form  part  of  the  intrinsic  character  of  the  objects. 
The  objects,  it  is  argued,  remain  the  same  whether  they  are  in 
or  out  of  these  relations;  and  whether  in  or  out  they  retain  all 
their  singularity  and  particularity.  The  world  which  arises 
on  this  view  of  the  intellect  is  a  collection  of  particular  facts 
and  events,  contingently  connected  by  external  laws,  which  are 
empirically  discovered.  The  laws  do  not  constitute  the  facts. 
The  facts  owe  nothing  to  their  being  parts  of  the  same  uni- 
verse.   The  laws  are  not  constitutive  principles;  and  facts  are 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  41 

not  samples  of  principles,  nor  their  manifestations  and  embodi- 
ments. The  laws  are  merely  names  we  give,  as  the  result  of 
experience,  to  the  repetitive  constancy  of  temporal  events;  they 
are  mere  notions  of  our  own  and  they  correspond,  rest  on, 
point  to  no  objective  realities.  Universals  do  not  exist.  They 
are  mere  generalizations.  "Particulars  are  the  only  realia/' 
It  is  regarded  as  the  characteristic  and  the  good  fortune  of 
natural  science  that  it  recognizes  this  truth,  and  seeks  no  ulti- 
mate and  universally  constitutive  principles.  That  extravagant 
ambition  and  impossible  adventure  it  leaves  to  philosophy  and 
religion.  Commerce  with  the  ultimate  and  perfect  is  primarily, 
we  are  told,  the  concern  of  the  heart,  that  is,  of  the  feeling 
and  willing  self.  For  it  is  evident  that  the  heart  when  it 
desires,  the  self  when  it  feels  and  wills,  reaches  outwards, 
escapes  from  its  isolation,  seeks  and  often  finds  fulfilment  and 
realizes  itself  in  and  by  something  other  than,  different  from 
itself.  The  self  possesses  and  is  possessed  by  its  object.  The 
object  is  thus  deprived  of  its  obstructive  otherness.  It  becomes 
man's  partner  in  the  enterprises  of  life.  Man's  world  is  in 
him  and  he  is  in  his  world.  And  this  process  is  at  its  highest 
and  completest  when  the  object  of  desire  and  of  the  practical 
devotion  of  will,  the  object  whose  "otherness"  or  "strangeness" 
or  "aloofness"  it  overcomes  is  the  perfect  or  best,  the  ultimate 
object  of  desire  and  man's  resting-place.  The  fullest  revelation 
of  man  and  of  the  range  of  his  desires  and  will  is  thus  to  be 
found  in  Religion.  It  is  Religion  that  brings  out  most  clearly 
man's  natural  intolerance  of  fixed  limitations,  or,  in  other 
words,  reveals  most  fully  the  implications  of  infinitude  that 
dwell  in  him. 

The  time  is  not  yet  for  us  to  examine  this  view  of  man's 
reason.  But  I  may  indicate  that  it  identifies  the  intelligence 
with  "the  understanding,"  confines  its  operations  to  finite  and 
therefore  particular  objects,  makes  the  domain  of  reason  a 
separate  territory  and  its  problems  at  once  inevitable  and  un- 
answerable, and  finds  the  progress  of  the  natural  sciences  to 
issue  from  the  limitation  of  their  aims.^     At  present  I  shall 

iSee  Preface  to  Kant's  Critique  of  Pure  Reason. 


42  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

simply  deny  the  validity  of  the  distinction,  and  I  shall  maintain 
that  the  intelligence  in  all  its  operations,  even  the  simplest,  is 
more  and  other  than  a  particularized  faculty.  It  reaches  over 
and  enters  into,  or  rather  finds  itself  in  objects;  just  as  the 
desires,  or  the  theoretical  and  practical  reason  of  man  are  held 
to  do.  All  its  actions  refute  the  view  that  the  object  is  alien, 
and  a  mere  "other,"  limiting  the  self.  Let  me  illustrate  this 
truth. 

If  we  observe  the  ordinary  attitude  of  the  ordinary  man,  in 
his  dealing  with  objects,  we  shall  find  that  he  takes  for  granted 
that  once  understood  they  may  be  the  means  of  extending  his 
power.  He  assumes,  in  fact,  that  objects  are  of  use,  if  he  can 
only  find  what  they  mean.  Objects  are  often,  possibly  always, 
capable  of  being  man's  helpmates,  and  efifective  partners.  In 
that  spirit  the  farmer  ploughs  his  fields,  sows  his  corn,  and 
awaits  the  harvest,  confident  of  the  co-operation  of  his  world 
in  the  fulfilment  of  his  natural  needs.  He  can  overcome  the 
dualism,  bring  his  world  over  to  his  side,  make  it  an  extension 
of  his  own  capacities.  His  whole  practical  life  is  a  refutation 
of  the  sheer  opposition  and  antagonism  of  nature  and  spirit. 
The  spiritual  uses  of  objects  and  their  spiritual  affinity  are 
not  recognized  so  readily.  They  reveal  themselves  only  very 
gradually,  and  are  more  unobtrusive  and  easily  overlooked. 
What  man  long  seeks  from,  and  finds  in  his  world  is  animal 
maintenance.  He  does  not  realize  the  part  that  his  world 
plays  in  making  himself — or  what  an  empty  and  impotent 
self  were  left  him  were  the  results  of  his  intercourse  with  his 
world  and  his  fellow-men  taken  away  from  him.  Objects 
somehow  guide  man's  enquiries,  refuse  their  help  to  ignorance 
and  resist  misconstruction.  They  awaken  mind,  create  and 
satisfy  man's  intellectual  hunger,  which  is  not  less  legitimate 
than  his  moral  aspirations  or  religious  yearnings,  nor  less  a  con- 
dition of  his  well-being.  Religion  and  science  will  be  recon- 
ciled when  it  is  realized  that  their  domains  overlap  in  this  way, 
and  are,  in  fact,  the  same. 

At  first  sight,  no  doubt,  the  demand  of  the  intelligence  is  for 
Truth  and  nothing  else,  and  that  of  religion  is  for  the  Good. 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  43 

Nevertheless,  they  coincide.  There  is  nothing  good  which  is 
not  true  or  real,  and  there  is  nothing  ultimately  and  finally 
true  which  is  not  good.  They  must  coincide,  for  they  are  both 
alike  Universal.  The  real  as  a  whole,  and  as  a  harmonious 
whole,  is  the  object  of  each.  Moreover,  the  authority  of  each 
is  final.  Truth  must  vindicate  itself,  even  as  goodness  must 
justify  itself.  It  must  be  valid  in  its  own  right,  and  only  reason 
can  substantiate  what  reason  avers.  The  appeal  to  utility 
or  value  of  any  kind  is  out  of  place.  Nothing  must  be  ac- 
cepted as  true  simply  on  the  ground  that  it  is  profitable  or 
useful.  After  all,  the  pragmatic  theory  rests  on  an  assump- 
tion whose  Truth  is  vital  to  it,  namely  that,  in  the  last  resort, 
nothing  "works"  except  what  fits  into  a  rational  universe  or  a 
universe  that  satisfies  the  intelligence.  It  is  its  own  intrinsic 
content  and  systematic  wholeness  which  gives  to  Truth  all  the 
certainty  it  can  have. 

Now  Religion  demands  the  absolute  in  both  these  forms, 
and,  as  a  consequence,  it  demands  that  they  shall  be  reconciled. 
In  other  words.  Religion  could  not  survive  a  fundamental  dis- 
crepancy between  the  Good  and  the  Real  or  True.  It  must 
be  the  experience  of  their  ultimate  agreement.  In  fact,  the 
consummation  of  religion  is  the  practical  discovery  that  in  the 
life  which  is  dedicated  to  the  Best  and  also  in  its  world,  value, 
truth  and  reality  are  at  One.  To  demonstrate  the  possibility 
of  their  coincidence  is  the  final  purpose  of  philosophy ;  to  ex- 
perience it  as  a  practical  fact  is  the  soul  of  religion. 

But  the  difficulties  are  as  great  as  they  are  obvious.  If  we 
profess  such  a  faith,  we  are  asked  at  once — "What  shall  we 
say  of  pain,  sorrow,  sin,  the  agonies  of  the  innocent  and  the 
prosperity  of  the  wicked — or  in  a  word,  of  the  whole  scene  that 
man's  history  presents?    Is  the  Bad  not  realf" 

At  first  sight  Religion,  and  the  intelligent  observation  of 
the  facts  of  life,  seem  to  give  answers  which  cannot  be  recon- 
ciled. The  former,  apparently,  must  deny  the  reality  of  evil, 
and  the  latter  must  admit  it.  And  I  need  hardly  add  that 
solutions  of  the  difficulty  have,  on  both  sides,  taken  the  form 
of  compromises.     The  perfection  and  self-determining  infini- 


44  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

tudc  which  the  intelh'gencc,  no  less  than  religion  demands  (//, 
that  is  to  say,  it  must  assume  that  the  Universe  is  a  Cosmos), 
has  been  attributed  to  the  Absolute;  but  not  to  God.  The 
God  of  Religion  is  spoken  of  as  limited  either  in  power  or  in 
goodness  or  in  both.  He  is  man's  leader  in  the  fight  against 
evil.  Moreover,  the  perpetual  nature  of  the  struggle,  or  its 
inconclusiveness  and  the  uncertainty  of  the  issue,  are  supposed 
to  add  zest  and  even  reality  to  the  moral  and  spiritual  adven- 
ture, and  to  give  God  something  useful  to  do.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  reality  of  evil  has  been  weakened  or  denied  by  means 
of  a  distinction  drawn  between  what  exists  and  what  is  real. 
The  assumption  on  which  this  doctrine  rests  is  that  the  real 
must  be  fixed,  and  changeless.  But  it  is  a  costly  distinction : 
for  it  involves  the  relegation  into  a  domain  that  is  neither  real 
nor  unreal  of  all  finite  things.  They  are,  but  they  are  "ap- 
pearances" or  "phenomena" :  and  so  far,  I  have  nev^r  learnt  the 
meaning  of  these  terms,  for  it  fluctuates  according  to  the  neces- 
sities of  the  moment.  But  this  method  does  not  help  reli- 
gion: for  "the  good"  becomes  as  passing,  and  on  this  view,  as 
unreal,  as  evil.  Indeed,  both  the  world  of  the  intelligence  and 
that  of  morality,  both  truth  and  goodness,  turn  into  phe- 
nomenal appearances,  that  is,  into  things  which  manage  to  exist 
without  being  real,  and  which  in  becoming  real  and  passing 
into  the  Absolute  cease  to  exist. 

Now,  it  would  take  me  far  afield  to  criticize  these  doc- 
trines. By  and  by  I  hope  to  make  plain  the  fundamental  fal- 
sity of  the  controlling  presupposition  (or  principle)  from 
which  they  spring.  At  present,  I  shall  merely  say  that  I  can- 
not deny  the  claim  of  religion  to  the  perfection  of  its  deity, 
nor  reject  the  testimony  of  the  intelligence  to  the  reality  of 
both  physical  and  spiritual  evil.  And  it  seems  evident  that 
the  first  involves  and  the  second  contradicts  the  idea  of  a  world 
that  is  perfect.  Those  solutions  which  are  offered  are  vtry 
easy,  but  they  are  suspect,  as  all  compromises  are.  They  are 
so  obviously  made  in  order  to  avoid  difficulties,  instead  of  from 
observation  of  facts.  The  view  of  the  divine  perfection  is 
moderated  in  order  to  leave  room  for  evil,  and  on  the  other 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  46 

hand,  the  reality  of  evil  is  denied  in  order  to  save  religion. 
But  so  far  as  I  can  see,  the  religious  history  of  man  gives  no 
ground  for  believing  that  he  consciously  worships  a  recognized 
imperfect  God.  For  the  moment,  even  the  God  of  the  poly- 
theist,  whom  at  any  instant  he  may  toss  aside,  stands  for  the 
perfection  he  needs.  On  the  other  hand,  the  secular  or  ordi- 
nary history  of  man  gives  no  ground  for  denying  the  existence 
and  genuine  reality  of  both  good  and  evil  in  his  life.  Even 
if  evil  is  evanescent,  or  is  overcome,  abolished,  or  turned  into 
its  opposite  in  a  way  which  Good  is  not,  it  does  not  follow  that 
it  lacks  reality  in  any  sense  or  degree. 

The  first  requisite  for  the  solution  of  the  contradiction  be- 
tween the  demand  of  religion  for  the  perfection  of  God,  and 
therefore  the  final  and  complete  victory  of  the  good  on  the  one 
hand  and  the  reality  of  evil  on  the  other,  is  the  honest  admis- 
sion that  the  contradiction  is  there,  and  inevitable:  though 
possibly,  like  other  contradictions,  it  is  there  only  to  be  solved. 
For  their  opposition  may  not  be  a  contradiction.  There  are 
opposites  which  not  only  supplement  but  exist  in  virtue  of  each 
other.  In  any  case,  the  contradiction  or  opposition  will  cer- 
tainly not  cease  to  exist  in  the  future.  On  the  contrary,  it  will 
grow.  As  mankind  advances,  religion  will  extend  and  deepen 
the  meaning  of  the  perfection  which  it  demands,  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  evil  of  evil,  the  significance  of  its  opposition  to 
the  good,  will  also  become  more  evident.  Man  will  become 
more  fully  aware  of  the  resources  of  the  Universe  in  which 
he  lives;  and,  on  the  other  side,  his  knowledge  of  himself  and 
of  the  possibilities  and  demands  of  his  nature  will  grow,  so 
that  any  spiritual  injury  done  to  the  self  will  have  deeper  sig- 
nificance. His  dedication  to  his  God  will  be  even  more  com- 
plete, and  his  rest  in  him  and  sense  of  oneness  with  him  will 
be  more  full. 

Put  more  directly,  I  believe  that  man  is  destined  to  become 
both  more  intelligent  and  more  religious.  His  recognition  of 
the  greatness  of  the  Spiritual  Destiny  of  mankind  will  become 
more  clear,  and  his  dedication  to  the  service  of  the  Good  will 
become  more  complete.     And  the  result  is  obviously  the  deep- 


46  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

ening  of  the  opposition,  so  long  as  it  lasts,  and  also  the  deep- 
ening of  the  reconciliation  when  it  comes.  The  refusal  of 
both  the  religious  and  the  intellectual  consciousness  to  with- 
draw or  modify  their  testimony  as  to  what  is  real  becomes  deci- 
sive. The  contradiction  cannot  be  avoided.  The  terms  of  it 
cannot  be  softened.  The  contrast  of  the  sacred  and  secular, 
infinite  and  finite,  in  all  its  forms,  must  be  admitted  in  its  ful- 
ness. Then,  and  not  till  then,  will  the  possibility  of  a  solu- 
tion arise,  and  the  contradiction  be  found  to  be  a  condition 
of  the  reality  and  the  work  of  the  conflicting  terms. 

The  nature  of  the  contrast  must,  however,  not  be  misin- 
terpreted: the  conditions  of  its  possibilit}-  must  be  clearly  ad- 
mitted. And  these  errors  are  committed  by  all  those  who  find 
it  impossible  to  reconcile  the  terms  and,  therefore,  betray 
either  the  one  or  the  other  of  them,  denying  either  the  perfec- 
tion which  Religion  demands  or  the  reality  and  the  imperfec- 
tion of  the  finite  to  which  the  intelligence  testifies.  It  may  be 
useful  to  shew  this  in  a  preliminary  way  before  we  come  to 
the  deeper  contrasts  of  finitude  and  infinitude. 

The  error,  briefly  stated,  is  that  of  overlooking  the  fact  that 
every  rational  contrast  falls  within  a  unity  of  some  kind;  or 
in  other  words,  that  the  contrasting  terms  are  in  truth  ele- 
ments within  a  whole,  and  that  they  neither  do  nor  can  exist 
otherwise.  To  give  them  a  separate  and  independent  exist- 
ence, or  even  to  raise  the  question  of  their  separate  existence 
is  to  raise  insoluble  questions — insoluble  because  irrational. 
Contrasts  made  absolute,  as  is  often  attempted  for  the  defence 
of  religion,  lose  all  meaning,  for  they  destroy  the  terms  con- 
trasted. So  we  are  told  by  the  Logician,  and  we  would  be 
none  the  worse  of  occasionally  sitting  at  his  feet.  The  con- 
trast, possible  and  rational  only  within  a  unity  of  some  kind, 
and  as  between  the  elements  of  a  whole,  implies  that  the  con- 
trasting elements  borrow  their  meaning  and  their  very  exist- 
ence from  each  other.  Make  it  absolute,  turn  the  contrast 
within  a  unit}'  into  a  complete  separation,  where  there  is  refer- 
ence to  no  unity,  and  the  elements  are  destroyed.  Unqualified 
sameness  and  unqualified  difference  are,  both  alike,  meaning- 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  47 

less.  Neither  of  them  was  at  any  time  the  object  of  any  ra- 
tional intelligence.  A  whole  that  has  no  parts,  parts  that  are 
parts  of  nothing,  we  never  can  know.  Knowledge  is  a  system 
of  systems :  every  part  of  it  is  a  unity  of  differences.  It  is  com- 
plex throughout.  It  is  systems  that  agree  or  disagree  in  our 
rational  experience.  The  simplest  unit  that  can  be  an  object 
of  the  intelligence  is  already  a  system.  Every  judgment  man 
makes  is  a  saying  of  something  about  something.  It  is  either 
a  further  articulation  of  a  whole  as  the  emphasis  falls  on  the 
elements,  or  a  clearer  expression  of  their  congruence  as  the 
emphasis  falls  on  their  unity.  And  the  thinking  in  the  first 
case  is  directly  analytic  and  indirectly  synthetic,  and  in  the 
second  case  the  reverse.  Every  judgment  is  thus  a  unity  of 
differences.  Every  fact  known  is  a  system.  "This"  is  a  sys- 
tem— the  mere  "this"  as  distinguished  from  "that."  It  is  some- 
thing distinct  as  against  something  else,  rounded  off  as  against 
something  else ;  and  it  has  its  own  character  or  quality  were  it 
only  that  it  occupies  a  different  spot  in  space.  Every  "particu- 
lar" is  a  system,  and  has  its  character,  arising  out  of  its  qual- 
ities. The  Universe  as  a  whole  is  but  a  system  of  such  systems, 
cellular  throughout,  so  to  speak,  like  the  living  body. 


LECTURE    V 

THE  WAY  WE  KNOW 

At  the  close  of  our  last  lecture,  I  ventured  to  suggest  that  the 
cause  of  the  failure  of  the  attempts  at  reconciling  the  demands 
of  religion  with  the  facts  of  human  experience,  except  by  com- 
promisnig  either  the  perfection  of  God  or  denying  the  reality 
of  evil — and  of  finite  existence — was  a  wrong  view  of  the  im- 
plications of  contrast.  The  unity  that  makes  contrast  pos- 
sible is  overlooked.  The  nature  of  that  unity,  its  relations  to 
its  contents,  how  both  it  and  its  elements  can  be  real, — these 
are  among  the  more  difficult  problems  both  of  philosophy  and 
religion.  And  we  must  confront  them;  but,  in  the  meantime, 
what  we  have  to  observe  is  the  omission  and  the  results  of  the 
omission  of  all  reference  to  any  unity  behind,  or  rather  within 
the  contrasted  elements.  We  were  occupied,  in  the  first  place, 
with  the  contrast  between  the  data,  and  consequently  between 
the  methods  of  the  natural  sciences  and  of  a  science  of  reli- 
gion, and  the  argument  of  those  who  deny  the  possibility  of 
applying  scientific  methods  to  religious  phenomena  on  the 
ground  of  the  uniqueness  of  those  phenomena.  Nor  do  I  wish 
to  deny  the  validity  of  their  argument:  method  does  and  must 
depend  on  material.  Nevertheless,  the  differences  of  method 
that  thus  arise  are  relatively  superficial;  there  is,  in  the  end, 
only  one  way  of  knowing.  Wise  men  and  simple,  religious  and 
irreligious,  scientific  and  vulgar,  the  intuitive  and  the  ratio- 
cinative  mind,  the  affirmative  believer  and  the  negative  sceptic, 
all  employ  the  same  ultimate  means  of  ascertaining  the  truth  or 
the  falsity  of  an  appearance,  and  of  comprehending  facts. 
They  all  employ  reason,  and  reason  has  always  its  own  way  of 

48 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  49 

acting.    The  same  method,  however,  may  be  put  to  a  more  or 
less  clear  or  confused,  perfect  or  imperfect  use,  and  it  is  within 
these  limits  that  it  varies  with  the  range  and  character  of  the 
data  and  with  the  purposes  which  the  enquiry  is  intended  to 
serve.    The  method  of  reason,  or  the  way  in  which  the  intellect 
does  its  work,  is  exemplified  in  every  judgment  that  man  makes, 
and  expressed  in  every  complete  sentence,  written  or  spoken. 
It  consists,  we  may  say,  in  exposing  the  elements  within  the 
unity  of  a  judgment,  making  their  presence  explicit;  or  in  re- 
vealing the  unity,  by  indicating  the  interdependence  of  the  ele- 
ments which  constitute  it.    As  a  matter  of  fact,  every  sentence 
we  form  exemplifies  both  this  (so-called)  analytic  and  synthetic 
movement.     And,  as  a  result  of  knowing,  the  system  of  our 
more  or  less  sane  and  coherent  experience  is  enriched  by  the 
harmonious  inclusion  of  some  new  appearance,  or  else  by  a 
fuller  exposition  of  its  contents.     On  the  whole,  the  sciences 
exemplify  the  former  way.    Their  progress,  broadly  considered, 
consists  in  their  application  to  new  facts   (as  we  say),  or  in 
the  discovery  at  the  heart  of  some  fresh  particular  of  the  pres- 
ence of  the  dominating  principle.     The  particular  becomes  an 
example  of  a  law.     The  progress  of  philosophy  and  of  religion 
and  of  all  reflective  thought  is  of  the  second  kind.    The  impli- 
cations of  experience  are  brought  out,  and  the  principles  opera- 
tive in  its  formation  are  the  objects  of  first  interest.     Religion 
and  philosophy  start  from  these  ultimate  principles,  live  in  their 
presence,  follow  them  out  as  they  exemplify  themselves  in  par- 
ticular facts  and  events.    The  reference  to  them  is  always  direct 
and  immediate.     For  the  sciences  the  ultimate  principle  is  a 
terminus  ad  quem,  something  reached  after.    They  proceed  syn- 
thetically, as  we  say;  and  they  seem  to  the  superficial  observer 
to  create  and  establish  relations  that  are  new,  and  to  invent 
colligating  conceptions.     They  work  upwards  towards  univer- 
sal, it  is  thought,  and  are  in  pursuit  of  the  illuminating  vision 
which  religion  and  philosophy  profess  to  have  in  their  hands 
from  the  first. 

Beyond  this  difference  I  know  no  other  between  the  methods 
of  the  finite  sciences  and  those  of  philosophy  or  of  religious 


50  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

experience,  and  even  this  difference  will  not  bear  pressing. 
For,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  every  movement  of  knowing  is  at  once 
(not  merely  consecutively)  both  synthetic  and  analytic.  Every 
science  carries  with  it  from  the  first  "the  law"  which  it  is 
seeking  to  find  exemplified  in  the  facts.  It  has  its  own  unique 
and  absolutely  indispensable  hypothesis.  There  is  no  science  till 
there  is  a  hypothesis  on  its  trial.  No  science  consists  in  a  col- 
lection of  facts,  however  similar,  and  no  science  is  purely  de- 
scriptive or  is  the  result  solely  of  observation.  Hence,  on  no 
hand  is  the  contrast  between  the  conditions  of  research  in  secular 
and  religious  phenomena  anything  more  than  relative.  It  is  a 
contrast  within,  or  of,  the  elements  of  a  deeper  unity.  The 
contrast  which  was  represented  as  an  obstacle  in  the  way  of 
scientific  enquiry  in  the  religious  field  is  real  enough  within  its 
limits,  but  it  is  not  absolute  nor  prohibitive. 

But,  inasmuch  as  the  possibility  of  applying  scientific  method 
to  religion  is  a  vital  question,  it  may  be  well  to  dwell  for  a 
moment  upon  another  aspect  of  it. 

In  every  case  of  knowing,  all  the  powers  of  mind  are  em- 
ployed, and  they  are  employed  upon  a  datum  or  object,  which 
participates  in  a  vital  way  in  the  knowing  process.  So  far  as  I 
know,  there  are  now  no  surviving  examples  of  the  psychologist 
who  avows  belief  in  the  existence  and  activity  of  separate  facul- 
ties; but,  on  the  other  hand,  neither  are  there  many  psycholo- 
gists who  do  not  make  use  of  the  conception  of  separate  facul- 
ties. Occasionally  an  attempt  is  made  to  give  priority  to  feel- 
ing, or  to  the  intellect  or  to  will — the  will  is  probably  the 
favourite  of  the  moment.  But,  on  the  whole,  I  think  we  may 
dogmatize  on  this  matter,  and  pass  on  our  way.  We  may 
assume  that  the  self  is  one  and  whole  in  all  that  it  does.  After 
all,  it  is  the  personality.  A,  B  or  C,  who  feels,  knows  or  wills; 
and  personality  is  not  an  entity  hiding  behind  the  faculties  and 
looking  on  as  they  work. 

I  turn  to  the  second  point  mentioned,  and  accentuate  the  fact 
that  the  cognitive  powers  are  always  employed  upon,  and  helped 
by  data  or  objects,  supposed  to  be  "given."  No  one  ever  thought 
of  nothing,  recognized  as  such.    We  can  no  more  know  or  try 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  61 

to  know,  without  the  apparent  resistance  of  an  object,  than  we 
can  walk  without  the  resistance  of  the  ground.  Moreover,  the 
object  of  a  knowing  process  guides  that  process.  The  object 
opens  one  way  and  blocks  up  another;  for  the  subject's  knowing 
of  an  object  is  the  object's  process  of  self-revelation  through 
the  medium  of  the  subject.  The  nature  of  facts  is  shown  in  that 
which  they  compel  the  observing  intelligence  to  see;  or,  in  other 
words,  objects  are  what  they  do,  in  relation  to  one  another  and 
to  the  mind.  We  recognize  them  by  their  functions.  They 
do  not  stand  aloof  from  the  changes  or  the  process  through 
which  they  pass — with  the  process  in  front  and  the  fact  itself 
"behind."  If  they  did,  then  the  process  would  be  impossible  and 
the  fact  unknowable.  Processes  apart  from  facts,  and  facts 
aloof  from  their  activities,  are  abstractions — the  products  of  a 
way  of  thinking  which  not  only  distinguishes  but  severs  and 
annihilates.  They  are  the  results  of  tearing  up  a  unity,  and  in 
doing  so  destroying  its  elements. 

But  minds  differ  most  widely  in  the  conceptions  (or  experi- 
ence) which  they  bring  to  the  facts,  and  in  the  light  of  which 
they  have  no  choice  but  to  interpret  them.  And  no  human 
mind  observes  the  whole  of  a  fact  at  any  time;  for  every  fact 
is  finally  explicable  only  in  the  light  of  the  universe  to  which  it 
is  related.  It  follows  that  there  is  no  fact  which  we  do  not 
observe  through  the  medium  of  presuppositions, — presupposi- 
tions, be  it  noted,  which  enter  into  the  constitution  of  mind 
and  affect  all  it  does.  Some  of  these  presuppositions  are  true 
and  some  false,  some  of  them  relevant  and  some  of  them  not, 
but  all  of  them  are  more  or  less  formative  and  constructive. 
The  result  is  that  the  data  of  experience  are  like  wet  clay  in 
the  hands  of  men.  They  signify  little  or  much,  according  to  the 
mind  and  character  which  moulds  and  makes  use  of  them. 
This  is  what  is  meant  by  saying  that  "the  mind  brings  with  it 
what  it  sees" — a  truth  which  is  illustrated  every  day  in  the 
differing  interests  and  purposes  and  capacities  of  men. 

In  the  next  place,  most  of  our  presuppositions,  especially  of 
those  presuppositions  which  play  a  decisive  part  in  determin- 
ing the  direction  of  our  lives,  are  unconsciously  entertained. 


52  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

and  their  truth  has  never  been  examined.  We  are  as  little 
aware  of  their  presence  and  of  their  activity  as  is  the  healthy 
man  of  his  digestive  apparatus.  Psychologists  who  speak  of 
consciousness  as  if  it  were  extended,  and  refer  to  it  as  a  "field," 
have  invented  "a  subconscious  region,"  in  which  these  presup- 
positions abide  and  from  which  they  may  emerge  at  times.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  there  is  no  such  region  and  there  are  no  such 
denizens.  Consciousness  is  a  process.  And  every  process  of 
mind  reacts  upon  the  structure  and  powers  of  the  mind,  per- 
sists in  the  results  it  has  produced  and,  in  that  form,  is  car- 
ried into  and  takes  part  in  the  present  activities  of  the  Ego. 
Everything  that  we  do  not  happen  to  think  about  at  the  mo- 
ment and  which  has  been  an  element  of  our  previous  experience 
is  subconscious  in  this  sense,  but  the  moment  it  is  the  object  of 
our  attention  it  ceases  to  be  subconscious. 

What  we  have  now  to  observe  is  that,  in  this  respect  also, 
while  ordinary  and  scientific,  learned  and  unlearned,  secular 
and  religious  men  look  at  the  world  with  minds  which  differ 
deeply,  still  the  difference  is  the  surface  of  an  identity.  All 
men  alike  are  oblivious  of  the  greater  part  and  the  deeper  mean- 
ings of  facts,  and  all  alike  make  their  own  selection.  Were  it 
not  that  they  live  under  the  influences  of  the  same  age  and  that 
they  are  heirs  to  the  same  social  inheritance,  traditional  or  other, 
fashioned  by  the  same  creeds  and  habits,  men  could  not  under- 
stand one  another  nor  live  by  means  of  one  another.  But,  in 
virtue  of  these  influences,  the  differences  between  them  become 
superficial  and  secondary.  In  the  end  the  same  kind  of  mental 
powers  are  employed  by  all,  and  they  are  employed  in  a  way 
and  under  final  conditions  which  are  the  same.  Some  minds, 
I  need  hardly  say,  are  more  imaginative,  emotional,  intuitive, 
judicious,  etc.,  etc.,  than  others;  and  psychology  cannot  well 
omit  speaking  of  "faculties,"  as  if  they  were  more  or  less  sepa- 
rate. In  truth,  these  mental  powers  can  neither  exist  nor  act 
in  complete  independence  or  isolation,  so  long  as  there  is  sanit}'. 
There  can  be  no  judgment  where  there  is  no  memory,  and  no 
memory  where  there  has  been  no  judgment.  There  is  neither 
memory,  nor  judgment,  nor  observation,  nor  ratiocination,  nor 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  63 

intuition  except  where  there  is  coherence — the  coherence  of  a 
system  which  is  the  more  or  less  adequate  expression  of  a  single 
sane  and  purposeful  experience. 

Further,  any  fact  or  datum  of  which  we  become  aware  in 
any  way,  even  as  a  mere  "this"  calling  for  explication,  already 
bears  the  marks  of  the  working  of  our  minds  upon  it.  It  already 
has  a  double  aspect.  It  isj  it  is  an  "object"  standing  over 
against  us,  and  it  has  some  more  or  less  vague  meaning,  value 
or  interest  for  us.  In  a  word,  we  never  do  get  back  to  the 
manifold  of  mere  sensation,  nor  to  an  "undifferentiated  con- 
tinuum." Nor  has  psychology  the  least  right  to  attribute  a 
cognitive  function  to  feeling.  We  cannot  even  imaginatively 
justify  the  dualism  of  pure  Ego  and  pure  datum.  We  do  not 
know  what  a  subject  having  no  object  or  an  object  of  no  sub- 
ject could  be.  We  have  never  discovered  either  except  in  re- 
lation to  its  other.  From  beginning  to  end  we  detect  them 
only  in  their  interaction.  We  are  born  into  and  awake  within 
a  world  which  has  been  for  countless  centuries  moulded  by  men  ; 
we  come  into  it  equipped  with  a  mental  apparatus  at  the  form- 
ing of  which  centuries  of  civilization  have  been  engaged. 

The  differences  between  men  and  their  intellectual  methods 
are  thus  relatively  shallow.  They  fall  within  a  deeper  unity. 
No  contrast  is  absolute.  There  is  nothing  quite  unique.  The 
unique  were  the  unknowable.  We  speak  of  intuitive  minds,  as 
if  there  were  some  men  to  whom  the  laborious  processes  of  ratio- 
cination were  a  mere  cumbersome  redundancy.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  the  musician  and  painter  and  poet  can  as  little  do  with- 
out observation  and  judgment,  purposeful  reason  and  will,  as 
they  can  without  their  intuitions.  Their  intuitions  are  always 
the  fruition  of  a  toilsome  experience.  And  what  is  true  of  the 
aesthetic  is  not  less  true  of  the  religious  spirit.  I  have  no  diffi- 
culty in  admitting,  not  only  that  there  are  markedly  intuitive 
minds  and  that  aesthetic  and  religious  experience  gives  ample 
evidence  of  what  is  called  "intuitive  apprehension";  but  also 
that  the  steps  of  that  method,  even  if  they  do  exist  separately, 
cannot  be  separately  indicated  and  described  by  psychology. 
Intuition  leaves  no  footmarks.     The  musical  movement  arises 


5<t  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

within  the  soul,  possesses  it  possibly  to  intoxication,  and  passes 
away.  It  has  not  been  summoned,  and  it  cannot  be  retained  by 
any  act  of  will.  The  significance  of  the  conception  of  the 
Fatherhood  of  God,  the  consciousness  of  the  overwhelming 
presence  of  a  boundless  and  everlasting  love,  these  sudden  inun- 
dations are  familiar  to  the  religious  mystic,  and  they  have  been 
experienced  by  some  very  humble  and  inconspicuous  followers 
of  what  is  right,  and  they  are  in  a  sense  quite  inexplicable.  We 
cannot  break  up  the  experience  into  the  separate  steps  of  a 
more  or  less  continuous  or  prolonged  process.  But  they  are 
inexplicable  only  in  the  same  sense  as  the  breaking  into  blos- 
som of  the  plant  is  inexplicable.  The  bud  is  there  to-day  and 
the  rose  blushes :  they  were  not  there  yesterday.  But  the 
conditions  were  present  and  they  were  in  operation.  The 
change  had  its  causes,  and  we  can  point  these  out.  ,  Similarly 
as  to  the  intuitions  of  Art  and  Religion.  Their  roots,  condi- 
tions, causes  are  real;  they  are  elements  of  experience.  Indeed, 
to  call  religion  the  noblest  blossoming  of  human  experience 
were  not  a  bad  definition  of  it. 

What  is  characteristic  of  intuition  is,  not  the  absence  of  the 
conditions  of  a  new  experience,  but  the  fulness  of  their  pres- 
ence and  the  intense  fusion  of  their  functions.  Mind  is  never 
so  really  at  one  as  in  its  intuitive  activities.  Nor  at  any  other 
time  is  the  past  experience  so  fully  present  and  living  and  active. 
Intuitions  are  the  emanations  of  a  past  experience.  They  come 
only  to  minds  or  dispositions  that  are  saturated  with  their  condi- 
tions. They  do  not  come  out  of  the  blue.  They  are  not  with- 
out their  premisses;  little  as  we  are  able  to  point  them  out  when 
they  occur.  They  are  examples  of  "judgment,"  expressions  of 
mind  and  character,  and  in  the  end  differ  in  nothing  that  is 
fundamental  from  the  laborious  activities  of  slow  minds.  Just 
as  all  the  parts  of  the  body  are  involved,  more  or  less  directly, 
in  every  physiological  process,  so  it  is  with  mind.  But  with 
this  distinction — as  I  may  try  to  show  more  fully  hereafter — 
that  the  parts  of  the  mind,  if  we  may  use  the  phrase,  differ 
from  one  another  in  a  more  far-reaching  way  than  the  parts  of 
the  body;  and  at  the  same  time  that  the  former  interact  and 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  65 

interpenetrate  and  form  a  unity  that  is  much  more  intense.  In 
no  kind  of  experience,  whether  secular  or  religious,  are  any  of 
these  powers  omitted  as  redundant.  Whatever  differences  of 
method  of  enquiry  and  progress  there  may  be,  they  fall  within 
the  unitj^  of  personality. 

Mind  is,  we  may  further  point  out,  receptive  as  well  as  crea- 
tive in  both  its  natural  and  its  spiritual  experience.  It  can  itself 
furnish  the  data  for  neither.  It  professes  to  find  the  facts,  not 
to  fabricate  them.  Not  one  step  can  it  go  beyond  the  given. 
Man  as  an  intelligence  is  as  completely  shut  within  his  world, 
and  has  as  completely  borrowed  from  his  world  all  the  material 
of  which  he  is  made,  as  he  is  as  a  physical  being.  He  cannot 
step  outside  of  it.  The  man  who  is  in  advance  of  his  age  owes 
his  advance  to  his  age  and  is  really  its  best  product.  The  pow- 
erlessness  of  man  which  religious  apologists  have  accentuated 
in  order  to  emphasize  the  unconstrained  freedom  of  divine 
benevolence  is  not  confined  to  the  spiritual  w^orld.  Man  is  as 
little  creative,  he  is  as  dependent  on  that  which  is  granted  him, 
as  much  an  almsman  standing  at  the  door  of  a  benevolent  power 
in  the  natural,  as  he  is  in  a  spiritual  sense.  I  have  somewhere 
compared  the  soul  of  a  man  to  a  city  with  many  gates,  situated 
on  a  plain  and  besieged  by  the  benevolent  powers  of  his  world. 
Both  nature  and  spirit,  both  the  world  of  things  and  the  world 
of  men  are  perpetually  proffering  their  gifts  to  him,  and  in  the 
most  diverse  ways.  If  their  truth  and  beauty  and  value  cannot 
get  in  by  one  gate,  they  may  by  another.  If  they  cannot  force  a 
passage,  panoplied  in  the  armour  of  reason,  they  may  creep  in 
through  the  darkness  and  silence  like  the  mist  into  Milton's 
Eden,  The  aesthetic  sense  may  give  them  entrance.  He  who 
is  slow  to  hear  the  voice  of  truth  speaking  of  morality  and  reli- 
gion, and  who  is  callous  to  all  reasoning  may  hear  them  in 
music,  or  recognize  their  appeal  in  colour  and  form.  The  truth 
I  would  impress  is  the  friendliness  of  the  world  to  man,  the 
co-operation  and  final  identity  of  the  purposes  of  nature  and 
spirit.    The  contrast  is  real,  but  it  is  not  absolute. 

It  could  be  proved,  I  believe,  that  no  facts  are  more  inter- 
dependent than  those  of  mind — the  facts  of  knowledge,  moral- 


56  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

it3^  art  and  rclij^ion.  There  is  far  less  evidence  of  "It  docs  not 
matter  to  me"  on  the  higher  than  there  is  on  the  lower  levels 
of  mental  life  or  spiritual  life.  It  is  the  "Good"  Shepherd  that 
goes  into  the  wilderness  to  seek  the  hundredth  sheep.  It  is  the 
enlightened  and  illumined  spirit  in  which  the  purposes  of  its 
times  throb,  and  whose  good  or  ill  fate  is  its  own.  Below  the 
domain  of  mind,  apart  from  the  marvellous  fact  of  Mother- 
hood, animal  and  human,  in  the  region  we  call  natural  there  is 
relative  independence  and  mutual  externality.  It  is  the  region 
of  comparative  indifference,  even  though  it  is  true  that  "we 
cannot  change  the  position  of  a  pebble  without  moving  the 
centre  of  gravity  of  the  Universe."  In  the  region  of  mind  and 
spirit,  of  truth,  goodness  and  beauty,  the  contrasts  are  deeper, 
but  the  interpenetration  and  interaction  of  the  elements  are  also 
greater.  No  differences  are  deeper,  no  antagonisms  more  direct 
or  uncompromising  than  those  of  the  spirit  of  truth  and  of  false- 
hood, or  of  the  wicked  and  virtuous  will.  On  the  other  hand, 
there  is  no  unity  so  deep  and  indiscerptible  as  that  of  the  mind 
or  spirit  or  of  the  "personality"  which  conceives  the  truth  or 
falsehood  and  does  the  right  or  wrong.  Destroy  the  rational 
soul  and  there  is  nothing  either  true  or  false,  good  or  evil ;  let 
it  work  out  its  destiny,  and  it  may  express  itself  in  ways  whose 
difference  material  estimates  cannot  measure. 

I  have  already  spoken  of  the  concentration  and  intensification 
of  interests  which  is  the  practical  result  of  religion  and  the 
theoretical  result  of  philosophy.  Religion  when  it  consecrates 
man's  secular  energies  and  powers  reconstitutes  them,  and  phi- 
losophy casts  a  new  light  upon  a  man's  world.  Such,  indeed,  is 
their  true  function.  But,  all  the  same,  to  sever  the  religious 
from  the  secular  life,  or  philosophy  from  common-sense,  as  is  too 
often  done,  is  to  take  away  the  kernel  and  leave  only  the  shell. 
Except  as  the  consecration  of  the  secular  life  and  the  new  use 
of  inner  and  external  circumstance,  religion  has  no  value  or 
function,  and,  except  as  the  reflective  re-interpretation  of  ex- 
perience, philosophy  has  no  cogency  or  truth.  To  sever  reli- 
gion from  ordinary  life  or  philosophy  from  the  experience  of 
the  scientific  and  of  the  plain  man  were  to  empty  them  of  their 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  67 

content.  So  that  the  contrast  between  these  is  at  once  the 
deepest  of  all  contrasts,  and  at  the  same  time  it  is  constitutive  of 
them.  Religion  and  Philosophy  are  in  a  sense  nothing  more 
than  points  of  view — man's  Mount  Nebo,  from  which  he  may 
survey  his  wanderings  in  the  wilderness  of  his  past  and  catch  a 
glimpse  of  the  land  beyond  his  Jordan,  and  at  least  conjecture 
the  destiny  of  a  being  endowed  as  he  is  with  responsibilities  and 
sleeping  potencies.  But  the  facts  must  be  there :  the  scene  must 
be  before  him.  His  religion  must  have  what  is  temporal  for 
its  content.  Except  as  re-interpreting,  re-directing,  transmut- 
ing the  practical  life  of  man,  it  has  little  value.  Has  it  any  at 
all? 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  what  value  would  the  secular  life 
retain  if  it  were  completely  sundered  from  religion?  Expunge 
all  traces  of  religious  belief;  delete  all  the  effects  it  has  ever 
had  in  the  life  of  man  and  of  human  society;  extinguish  the 
hopes  it  has  kindled,  the  fears  it  has  awakened,  its  restraints  and 
its  inspiration,  its  trust  in  the  ascendancy  of  what  is  good;  re- 
duce the  meaning  and  reach  of  good  to  purely  secular  values, 
how  much  of  w'hat  man  treasures  most  would  remain?  Is  a 
genuinely  irreligious  consciousness  entitled  to  regard  the  world 
as  a  cosmos,  and  would  any  higher  form  of  morality  survive 
than  that  w^hich  is  prudential  and  radically  self-regarding  and 
responsive  to  no  imperatives  that  could  be  called  duties  ?  What 
is  the  range  of  the  purely  "natural"  virtues  of  man?  Could  any 
virtue  survive  if  an  ultimate  good  were  known  not  to  exist? 
The  moral  lights  would  certainly  be  very  low,  and  man's  strides 
to  his  ill-lit  purposes  would  be  hesitating.  And  would  the  con- 
ception or  the  hope,  or  even  the  desire  of  immortalitj^  survive? 
Could  man  wish  to  extend  his  existence  in  a  world  where  there 
was  no  Best  in  power;  pursuing  interests  incapable  of  being 
reconciled,  all  of  them  perishable ;  the  inequalities  of  the  pres- 
ent life  finally  uncorrected  and  justice  sitting  powerless?  For 
it  is  such  a  scene  as  that  which  the  life  of  mankind  presents  if 
no  spiritual  principles  connect  its  details  and  give  them  sig- 
nificance, and  if  it  terminates  finally  here. 

Huxley,  standing  at  the  side  of  the  grave  of  his  little  son, 


58  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

was  shocked  at  hcarinjr  the  words  of  Paul — "If  the  dead  rise 
not  let  us  eat  and  drink,  for  to-morrow  we  die."  "Paul,"  he 
said,  "had  neither  wife  nor  child,  or  he  must  have  known  that 
his  alternative  involved  a  blasphemy  against  all  that  was  best 
and  noblest  in  human  nature.  I  could  have  laughed  with 
scorn."  Huxley  was  right  in  rejecting  the  Pauline  alternative, 
and  in  attributing  high  value  to  the  natural  affections.  But 
the  best  and  noblest  in  human  nature  of  which  he  spoke  were 
themselves  the  slow  results  of  the  faith  in  the  possibility  and 
power  of  the  Best,  which  religion  is  and  of  which  mankind  has 
never  been  altogether  bereft.  Human  nature  owes  its  sublim- 
ity to  a  faith  in  a  sane  order,  within  which  failures  are  not 
necessarily  final.  Destroy  the  possibility  of  the  Best,  and  the 
very  thought  of  it,  secure  the  complete  triumph  of  the  secular 
spirit, — one  wonders  what  ties  would  bind  human  beings  to- 
gether in  any  form  of  society,  and  what  manner  of  love  would 
remain  between  man  and  maid,  parent  and  child,  or  neighbour 
and  neighbour. 

I  venture  to  say  that  both  believers  and  sceptics  would  be 
less  ardent  in  their  advocacy  of  their  severed  regions,  the  one 
all  sacred  and  the  other  all  secular,  if  they  faced  the  meaning  of 
the  exclusive  contrast  somewhat  more  fully  and  frankly. 

I  do  not  deny  the  contrast:  I  do  not  even  minimize  it.  I 
am  trying  rather  to  show  the  conditions  of  its  possibility.  It 
must  rest  on  a  deeper  unity:  or,  in  other  words,  its  elements 
must  fall  within  what  comprehends  them  both,  and  they  must 
imply  that  unity  in  their  very  antagonism. 

This  unity  is  not  discoverable  if  we  seek  it  in  anything  "be- 
yond" their  difference.  It  is  not  a  thing  standing  by  itself.  It 
consists  in  their  mutual  interpenetration.  But  how  shall  we 
define  it?  What  is  the  character  of  the  bond  that  unites  the 
divine  and  human,  as  all  religion,  and  as  the  Christian  religion 
so  explicitly,  demands?  What  community  of  nature  can  exist 
between  the  Infinite  and  the  Finite,  the  Everlasting  Real,  the 
Might  and  the  Goodness  that  are  Unlimited  and  man's  petty 
and  sin-stained  phenomenal  existence?  Every  detail  of  the 
work  of  the  Being  which  men  worship  as  the  World's  Creator, 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  69 

every  least  fact  that  falls  within  man's  comprehension  extends 
also  beyond  it ;  we  can  touch  only  the  outer  rim  of  the  secrets  of 
the  simplest  natural  phenomenon.  There  is  infinite  suggestion 
in  everything,  and  we  know  nothing  fully.  How  then  can  we 
presume  to  know  Him?  Are  not  all  our  conceptions  necessarily 
anthropomorphic?  And  how  can  anything  that  is  true  of 
man,  his  mode  of  knowing  little  by  little  and,  at  the  best,  of 
learning  goodness  by  petty  stages — a  life  spent  in  the  flux  of 
time  and  change,  dying  and  being  born  again  at  every  instant, 
always  making  and  never  made, — how  can  any  figure  we  bor- 
row from  it  be  true  of  the  static  perfection  usually  attributed 
to  the  Deity?  Our  minds  are  not  only  influenced  by,  they  are 
built  up  of  our  own  shifting  experiences.  We  call  our  God — 
Leader  in  Battle,  Lord  of  Hosts,  Judge,  Father — we  speak  of 
him  as  angry,  as  taking  vengeance  on  his  enemies,  as  condemn- 
ing, approving,  caring  for  man,  all  according  to  the  level  of 
culture  we  presume  to  possess  and  the  mood  we  are  in.  What 
do  we  ever  see,  except  the  reflection  of  our  own  faces?  How 
dare  we  create  our  gods  in  our  own  image?  What  can  bridge 
the  difference  that  divides  the  Everlasting  God  from  the  pass- 
ing show  we  call  man  ?  And  yet,  when  the  religious  conscious- 
ness is  at  its  noblest  height,  and  is  most  worthy  of  man,  and, 
I  will  add,  most  true  in  its  testimony,  it  makes  man  share  the 
divine  life.  The  infinite  perfection  of  limitless  love  actually 
lives  in  man.  Every  good  man  is  the  Child  of  God,  and  his 
life  in  its  strivings  for  goodness  is  the  divine  perfection  operat- 
ing within  him.  God  incarnates  himself  anew  in  all  his  chil- 
dren. What  is  merely  human  is  lost  to  view.  Even  man's 
will,  his  inmost  being  and  ultimate  self,  as  we  think  it,  is  swal- 
lowed up.  "For  it  is  God  which  worketh  in  you  both  to  will 
and  to  do  of  his  good  pleasure"  (Phil.  ii.  13).  "Not  that  we 
are  sufficient  of  ourselves  to  think  anything  as  of  ourselves; 
but  our  sufficiency  is  of  God"  (II  Cor.  iii.  5).  "So  now  also 
Christ  shall  be  magnified  in  my  body,  whether  it  be  by  life  or 
by  death.  For  to  me  to  live  is  Christ  and  to  die  is  gain"  (Phil, 
i,  20,  21).  Here  is  complete  identification,  a  losing  of  one's 
self  in  utter  devotion  and  dedication,  and  at  the  same  time  that 


60  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

marvellous  recovery  of  the  self  which  entitles  man  to  say — 
"I  and  the  Father  are  One." 

In  the  presence  of  such  an  amazing  elevation  of  the  human 
into  union  with  the  divine,  there  is  small  wonder  that  the  con- 
trast even  of  the  highest  moral  life  with  the  religious  has  been 
regarded  as  final.  The  value  of  morality  seems  to  sink  into 
nothingness.  The  whole  moral  region  is  one  scene  of  failure, 
a  striving  that  never  attains.  For  does  not  the  very  striving 
rest  on  unsound  principles?  As  moral,  man  professes  to  work 
out  his  own  salvation,  and  instead  of  religious  trust  there  is  self- 
dependence. 

Does  not  the  contrast  amount  even  to  discrepancy?  Morality 
leaves  no  room  for  God:  man  is  the  maker  of  his  own  destiny. 
Religion  leaves  no  room  for  man:  it  is  not  I  that  live,  but 
Christ  lives  in  me.  And  yet,  what  value  would  we  set  upon 
a  Religion  that  does  not  saturate  the  moral  life  and  lift  it  into 
sublimity  if  it  be  great;  or  if  it  be  a  very  humble  life,  impart 
to  it  imperishable  beauty? 

I  believe  you  will  agree  with  me  that  if  we  look  in  a  simple 
and  truthful  spirit  upon  the  lives  which  we  would  unhesitat- 
ingly call  "religious,"  they  possess  both  of  these  characteristics. 
They  differ  decisively  from  the  lives  we  would  regard  as  typi- 
cally secular;  and  yet  they  are  occupied,  and  necessarily  occu- 
pied, with  the  same  natural  wants,  hemmed  in,  like  all  other 
lives,  by  space  and  time,  and  the  objects  and  events  which  jostle 
each  other  therein. 

What  solution  can  there  be  of  a  problem  which  demands  at 
the  same  time  a  unity  and  a  difference  of  such  depth?  For 
there  is  no  doubt  that  religious  faith  demands  both,  or  that  it 
loses  both  its  truth  and  its  worth  in  the  degree  in  which  either 
the  unity  or  the  difference  of  the  secular  and  the  sacred  is 
reduced. 


LECTURE  VI 

SCIENTIFIC    HYPOTHESIS    AND    RELIGIOUS    FAITH 

I  HAVE  attributed  the  failure  of  the  attempts  to  reconcile  the 
presuppositions  on  which  religion  rests  and  the  demands  it 
makes  with  our  ordinary  secular  experience  to  the  fact  that  the 
unity  which  must  underlie  the  contrast  has  been  overlooked — 
an  oversight  which  makes  the  contrast  absolute  and  uncon- 
ditional. The  last  lecture  was  occupied  throughout  in  point- 
ing to  evidence  of  the  existence  of  such  a  unity.  Beneath  the 
differences  of  method,  which  are  quite  real,  and  which  both  the 
scientific  and  the  religious  enquirers  must  admit  and  respect, 
there  lies  the  fact  that  there  is  only  one  ultimate  way  of  know- 
ing. It  consists  in  finding  a  place  for  new  phenomena  within 
our  system  of  experience,  or  in  re-interpreting  that  experience 
in  the  light  of  the  new  demands  of  life.  For  experience  grows 
like  a  living  thing.  It  is  always  a  system,  always  analogous  to 
a  living  organism,  and  every  part  of  it  participates  in  every 
process  and  all  of  it  is  always  changing.  No  one  maintains  that 
one  part  of  the  organism  is  nourished  one  day  and  another  part 
another  day.  And,  in  like  manner,  it  should  be  admitted  that 
the  whole  system  of  our  experience  is  enriched  by  a  new  truth, 
or  a  new  practical  triumph.  I  indicated  also  that  all  the  powers 
of  mind  were  involved  in  the  process  of  knowing,  whether  the 
data  were  religious  or  secular,  and  that  every  mind  brought 
with  it  presuppositions  which  controlled  and  guided  the  know- 
ing process.  Moreover,  I  tried  to  show  the  part  which  the 
objects  of  knowledge  took  in  the  process,  and  ventured  to  repre- 
sent "nature,"  "natural"  facts,  "natural"  tendencies,  "natural" 
interrelations  between  man  and  man,  "natural"  or  secular  inter- 

61 


62  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

est  as  a  whole,  not  as  obstacles  to  the  life  of  spirit,  but  as  sup- 
plying that  life  with  its  content.  The  world,  both  natural  and 
spiritual,  is  constantly  proffering  its  gifts  to  man,  and  he  that 
hath  ears  to  hear  listens  to  its  beauty,  its  order,  its  goodness 
and  its  truth.  Those  who  best  know  the  history  of  religion, 
know  best  what  a  profound  change  of  attitude  towards  "nature" 
on  the  part  of  religion  this  implies.  Finally,  I  tried  to  suggest 
what  poverty-stricken  abstractions  the  religious  and  the  secular 
life  would  be  were  they  sundered.  And  I  ventured  to  say  that 
both  those  who  value  religion  rather  than  morality,  and  also 
those  who  deem  religion  of  little  import  if  the  course  of  life 
be  moral,  would  gain  by  facing  more  frankly  the  contrast  which 
they  set  up.  For,  beyond  doubt,  the  truly  religious  man 
does,  somehow,  in  his  practical  life  reconcile  these  forces,  and 
no  unprejudiced  observer  can  deny  the  splendour  of  the 
result. 

The  problem  of  a  science  of  religion  is  to  set  forth,  in  a  defi- 
nition which  can  be  justified,  that  principle  which,  in  the  prac- 
tice of  the  religious  man,  brings  about  the  miracle  of  the  har- 
mony of  the  divine  and  human  and  lifts  the  secular  to  the  level 
of  the  sacred.  It  may  be  of  use  to  recall  our  conception  of 
Religion  as,  on  the  theoretical  side,  a  point  of  view  from  which 
man  sees  what  seems  to  him,  at  the  time,  to  be  ultimately  real, 
self-sustained  and  absolutely  worthy,  in  the  light  of  which  con- 
ception he  re-interprets  and  re-valuates  all  the  facts  of  the 
secular  life.  The  reflective  religious  spirit,  so  far  as  I  have 
found,  never  doubts  but  that  somehow,  somewhere,  some-when, 
the  restoration  of  man  is  complete  and  the  redemption  of  the 
world  is  final.  "God's  in  his  Heaven:  All's  right  with  the 
world"  is  a  vital  conviction  to  religion  and  true  to  him  who 
thinks  of  "the  world"  in  its  context  and  not  as  a  separate  item. 
For  it  means  that,  in  the  light  of  his  belief  in  a  God  who  is  per- 
fect in  power  and  goodness,  this  world  of  ours,  and  the  most 
wild  and  incalculable  facts  within  it,  namely  the  lives  of  men, 
are  factors  in  a  system,  to  be  judged  not  by  themselves  but  as 
parts  of  the  system  into  which  they  fit  and  which  amply  justifies 
them.  On  the  other  hand,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  the  sceptic  who 
considers  that  the  conceptions  on  which  religion  is  based  are 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  6S 

man's  own  inventions,  and  that  man's  gods  are  just  the  reflec- 
tions of  his  own  face,  and  his  faith  a  farce,  must  regard  the 
whole  realm  of  the  real  as  also  a  farce,  and  a  tragically  sad 
farce.  The  whole  order  of  the  Universe  must  collapse  for  the 
sceptic.  He  possesses  no  explanation  of  his  own,  and  can  sug- 
gest no  conception  for  the  solution  of  the  riddle.  Between  the 
view  that  affirms  and  that  which  denies  the  existence  of  a  unity 
that  makes  the  universe  a  rational  whole  there  comes,  of  course, 
one  of  the  most  inept  of  all  metaphysical  theories,  namely,  the 
Pluralism  that  "lets  contingency  into  the  very  heart  of  things." 
I  shall  not  try  your  patience  by  criticizing  it.^ 

From  this  point  of  view,  namely,  the  theoretical,  the  faith 
of  the  religious  man  is  strictly  analogous  to  the  hypothesis  of 
the  scientific  man.  But  the  religious  consciousness  is  ready  to 
revolt  against  the  notion  that  its  faith  is  just  a  hypothesis.  A 
hypothesis  is  usually  held  to  be  a  mere  guess,  invented  by  man's 
ingenuity  as  a  possible  solution  of  some  problem,  or  as  a  tenta- 
tive explanation  of  some  facts,  A  hypothesis  is  a  conjecture  on 
its  trial.  Its  existence  is  threatened  by  every  relevant  fact  which 
it  cannot  explain,  and  it  is  finally  destroyed  by  one  single 
"crucial  instance"  that  refuses  to  illustrate  it.  Moreover,  it  is 
liable  at  every  moment  to  be  supplanted  by  some  simpler,  more 
fundamental  or  far-reaching  hypothesis.  An  Einstein  comes 
after  our  Newtons,  and  at  least  startles  the  world.  The  whole 
progress  of  science,  when  it  takes  long  strides,  illustrates  this 
revolutionary  kind  of  advance  that  comes  from  the  substitution 
of  one  hypothesis  for  another. 

In  the  next  place,  a  hypothesis,  however  true,  is  only  a  the- 
ory. It  concerns,  primarily  at  least,  the  intellect  only,  not 
"the  heart"  or  the  will  or  the  ends  of  men.  In  short,  a  hypoth- 
esis is  a  mere  conception,  we  are  told,  a  universal  that  prom- 
ises to  colligate  ideas,  but  points  to  no  fact  and  is  not  a  reality 
which  a  man  may  experience  as  a  force  within  or  without  him, 
against  which  he  jostles  whether  he  understands  it  or  not.  No 
man  will  commit  his  life  to  the  care  and  guidance  of  a 
hypothesis  recognized  as  such.     What  guides  conduct  must  be 

^See  my  "Philosophical  Landmarks"  in  The  Rice  Institute  Pamphlet  for 
June,   1915. 


64  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

assumed  to  be  ontologkally  true,  it  must  be  a  faith.  But,  for 
the  scientific  man  to  convert  his  hypothesis  into  a  faith  were  to 
betray  the  very  spirit  of  science.  A  hypothesis  must  not  turn 
into  a  dogma,  and  the  scientific  man  is  the  servitor  of  no  creed. 
Hypotheses,  consequently,  cannot  transform  character.  They 
have  no  practical  vim.  They  have  by  no  means  proven  them- 
selves, as  religious  faith  has  done,  to  be  of  all  forces  the  strong- 
est in  man's  history.  The  difference  is  vital,  and  must  not  be 
obscured.  Even  philosophers,  who  are  supposed  to  attenuate 
realities  into  abstractions,  will  say  that  "If  the  belief  in  God  is 
simply  an  hypothesis  ...  it  is  worth  nothing  at  all.  Ideas  have 
certain  sustaining  powers,  even  though  they  are  wholly  our 
own  fabrications;  but  no  idea  that  is  such  a  pure  launch  of  our 
own  imagination  into  the  unknown — and  nothing  more — has 
any  permanent  sustaining  power.  .  .  .  God  can  be  of  worth  to 
man  only  in  so  far  as  he  is  a  Known  God."  *  As  long  as  we 
have  only  probabilities  and  hypotheses  to  refer  to  in  these  mat- 
ters we  have  nothing  at  all. 

The  difference  between  a  scientific  hypothesis  and  religious 
faith  seems  to  be  fundamental.  The  sciences  may  conjecture, 
religion  must  "knoiv":  that  is  to  say,  it  must  be  a  matter  ex- 
perienced. Our  ordinary  beliefs  rest  on  grounds,  follow  from 
premisses,  are  held  to  be  valid  in  virtue  of  their  connection 
with  other  truths.  The  truths  of  a  scientific  system  must  in 
this  way  depend  on  one  another.  If  you  demand  a  proof  of 
anyone  of  them  you  are  referred  back  to  something  else — and 
it  has  been  maintained  that  such  a  reference  is  endless  and  that, 
in  the  end,  all  our  knowledge  rests  upon  conjecture,  or  is  hypo- 
thetical, and  hangs  in  mid-air  by  an  "if."  But  religion  as  a 
matter  of  experience  is  held  to  be  a  witness  to  its  own  validity. 
This  experience  itself  is  the  final  court  of  appeal,  and  its  au- 
thority is  supposed  to  be  higher  and  more  unerring  than  that  of 
any  logic.  The  religious  believer  on  this  view  is  not  required 
to  uphold  his  faith  by  means  of  his  intellect.  Arguments  have 
no  force ;  they  cannot  touch,  either  to  strengthen  or  to  weaken, 
what  springs  from  a  man's  own  "experience." 

^Hocking's  The  Meaning  of  God  in  Human  Experience,  pp.  214-215. 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  65 

On  such  grounds  as  these  religious  experience  has  appeared 
to  have  a  claim  for  exceptional  regard  and  reliance.  He  who 
maintains  this  view  may  see  that  by  this  method  he  loses  the 
support  of  the  intellect,  but  he  certainly  does  not,  as  a  rule, 
realize  the  results  of  losing  that  support.  He  does  not  see  that, 
without  the  testimony  of  the  intellect,  he  is  not  entitled  to  say 
that  his  experience  is  true,  however  undeniable  it  may  be  that  he 
has  had  it.  That  he  has  had  an  experience  is  no  proof  of  its 
truth,  otherwise  all  personal  experiences  would  be  true.  They 
have  all  occurred  as  events  of  some  inner  life,  but  some  of  them 
may  have  a  very  low  value,  or  even  be  deceptive.  The  hap- 
pening of  an  event  in  a  man's  inner  life  is  one  thing,  the  mean- 
ing and  value  to  be  attributed  to  it  is  another.  It  is  quite 
certain  that  we  can  call  nothing  either  true  or  false  until  the 
intellect  has  dealt  with  its  meaning  and  found  its  place  amongst 
facts  which  are  open  to  the  observation  of  every  intelligence. 
The  privacy  or  subjective  nature  of  it  destroys  its  uses  for 
knowledge.  But  the  religious  devotee  overlooks  these  facts, 
and  refuses  to  make  any  appeal  to  the  intelligence  at  the  very 
moment  that  he  claims  credence  to  his  assertions.  Browning's 
Pope  refuses  even  to  raise  the  question  of  the  being  or  character 
of  his  God: 

"I 

Put  no  such  dreadful  question  to  myself, 

Within  whose  circle  of  experience  burns 

The  central  truth.  Power,  Wisdom,  Goodness — God." 

He  assumed  that  because  this  conviction  burnt  within  him,  it 
must  be  true;  and  thought  there  was  no  need  for  argument. 
But  have  not  false  convictions  burnt?  His  evidence  was 
within,  deep  as  his  own  life,  a  veritable  part  of  his  life;  he 
could  not  but  accept  it. 

"I  must  outlive  a  thing  ere  know  it  dead; 
When  I  outlive  the  faith  there  is  a  sun, 
When  I  lie,  ashes  to  the  very  soul, — 
Someone,  not  I,  must  wail  above  the  heap."  * 

^The  Ring  and  the  Book,   1630-7. 


66  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

Someone  else  must  deny,  and  very  likely  someone  else  will  be 
found  to  do  it,  on  the  ground  that  he  has  had  no  such  experi- 
ence or  even  that  he  has  experienced  the  opposite. 

But  we  must  examine  this  very  common  attitude  of  men 
towards  religious  experience  with  some  care,  and  find  out  what 
truth  it  uses  as  gilding  to  its  errors. 

1.  It  cannot  be  denied  that  religion  verily  is,  through  and 
through,  a  matter  of  experience.  The  domain  of  religious  faith 
is  that  of  practice,  while  hypotheses,  scientific  or  other,  are,  as 
a  rule,  considered  to  be  essentially  and  primarily  theoretic 
affairs  and  nothing  more.  It  follows  naturally  that  proof,  dis- 
proof, and  doubt  must  differ  in  the  two  cases.  The  test  of  a 
religious  faith  lies  in  the  kind  of  behaviour  that  it  inspires  and 
controls,  and  in  the  contribution  it  makes  to  human  well-being. 
The  proof  is  pragmatic.  It  is  like  the  test  of  an  invention,  and 
in  nowise  like  the  arguments  for  or  against  a  theory.  It  con- 
sists in  observing  "how  it  works."  But  the  test  of  a  hypothesis 
is  its  agreement  or  disagreement  with  other  ideas  which  are 
regarded  as  true,  or  with  the  system  of  experience  that  is  rele- 
vant. If  I  accept  such  and  such  a  statement,  what  opinions, 
if  any,  must  I  change?  Can  I  admit  that  the  three  angles  of  a 
triangle  are  together  equal  to  two-and-a-half  right  angles  ?  Not 
without  overthrowing  the  whole  system  of  my  mathematical 
experience.  It  is  all  a  matter  of  the  coherence  of  thoughts  with 
thoughts. 

Now  this  difference  between  a  matter  of  faith  and  a  hypoth- 
esis is  real,  but  it  is  quite  superficial,  and  in  the  last  resort  dis- 
appears. The  practical  test  is  also  a  test  by  the  intellect.  The 
intelligence  must  look  on,  guide  and  judge  what  the  hand  does. 
Practice  only  supplies  new  premisses,  and  it  supplies  these  only 
to  the  observant  intelligence.  Handling  a  thing,  placing  it  in 
different  relations  reveals  new  qualities.  You  know  more  about 
a  piece  of  leather  if  you  hammer  it,  bend  it,  cut  it;  you  mul- 
tiply the  ways  in  which  it  reacts,  and  give  new  opportunities 
for  your  intelligence  to  observe  the  view  aspects.  But,  without 
the  intelligence,  nay,  without  previous  relevant  knovvledge, 
great  or  small,  practice  amounts  to  nothing.     Man  must  inter- 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  67 

pret  his  experience,  and  find  all  the  meaning  and  value  they  can 
have;  and  he  finds  nothing  that  does  not  penetrate  his  intelli- 
gence, more  or  less,  and  pass  muster  before  his  judgment.  Prac- 
tice supplies  data;  it  is  the  intelligence  which  proves,  disproves, 
accepts  or  rejects;  and  in  questions  of  truth  and  error  there  is 
no  appeal  from  it,  nor  the  need  of  any  appeal. 

2.  But  if  religious  experience  does  not  render  the  operations 
of  the  "theoretical"  intelligence  superfluous,  it  must  not  be  con- 
cluded that  it  has  no  value.     It  does  supply  data.     The  reli- 
gious man  in  virtue  of  his  experience  can  call  a  witness  and 
appeal  to  a  court  which  are  beyond  the  reach  of  the  non-reli- 
gious man.     He  is  entitled  to  say  what  religion  has  meant  for 
him :  how  it  has  determined  the  direction  of  his  life,  transmuted 
it  in  every  detail  in  virtue  of  the  supreme  worth  of  its  ends,  sus- 
tained him  in  the  pursuit  of  these  ends,  and  made  the  pursuit 
itself  a  triumphant  attainment.     But  the  non-religious  man,  not 
having  had  any  such  experience,  must  do  without  its  testimony 
and   speak   from   incomplete   knowledge.      The   fact,    process, 
reality  of  religion  is  not  known  to  him  on  its  inner,  or  sub- 
jective side.     Religion  is  a  matter  of  hearsay  to  him.     At  the 
very  best  he  can  only  form  the  opinions  of  a  looker-on.     He 
is  like  a  deaf  man  who,  having  been  taught  the  physics  of  sound 
and  laws  of  harmony,  approves  or  condemns  a  piece  of  music; 
but  he  has  never  heard  a  note,  he  knows  nothing  of  the  ravish- 
ment of  music  and  cannot  conceive  what  it  is  like.     Neither  the 
non-religious  man,  nor  the  deaf  man,  know  all  about  their  sub- 
ject so  long  as  they  are  without  the  personal  experience,  how- 
ever correct  their  theories.     Do  they  know  the  real  thing  at  all, 
seeing  that  they  have  never  known  its  splendour  invade  the  soul  ? 
The  looker-on  at  religion,  the  secular-minded  sceptic,  must 
recognize  his  limits.     And  I  may  say  quite  plainly  here  that  a 
great  deal  of  the  scepticism  of  the  present  day  is  for  these  rea- 
sons not  worthy  of  respect.     Men  reject  what  they  have  never 
tried,  and  condemn  what  they  have  never  seriously  or  systemat- 
ically  reflected   upon.     They  have  been  engaged  with   other 
things  than  those  which  are  spiritual,  and  which  concern  the 
making  of  their  manhood.     The  affairs  of  religion  are  as  for- 


68  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

eign  to  them  as  the  computations  of  higher  mathematics,  and 
their  judgment  of  the  former  has  as  little  value  as  their  knowl- 
edge of  the  latter.  They  have  not  tried  it  in  practice;  they  do 
not  know  its  history;  they  are  not  within  reach  of  advanced 
argument  either  for  or  against  religion.  Their  morality  is  tra- 
ditional, and  the  whole  movement  of  their  thoughts  is  in  an- 
other region  and  on  another  plane  than  that  of  religion.  And, 
many  of  them  being  prosperous  in  a  worldly  sense,  they  are  not 
in  the  least  aware  how  contemptible  they  are  in  a  higher  and 
deeper  sense. 

But  having  thus  fully  conceded  the  value  of  the  personal 
aspect  of  religious  experience,  I  must  point  out  that  religious 
experience  is  in  this  respect  the  same  as  every  other  experience, 
wise  or  foolish,  of  every  other  object,  however  secular.  Every 
experience  is  on  one  side  unique  and  private.  Every  act  and 
attitude  of  my  mind  is  my  own  and  no  one  else's.  My  neigh- 
bours and  I  may  know  the  same  things,  form  the  same  opinions 
of  them,  will  the  same  good,  seek  to  serve  our  fellows  in  the 
same  ways ;  nevertheless,  every  one  of  my  activities  is  my  own, 
and  theirs  is  theirs.  However  many  men  may  conclude  that 
2X8=16  (or  children  may  think  that  2X8,  may  be  "9, 
or  10,  or  11,"  giving  one  an  option!),  each  comes  to  his  own 
conclusion  and  has  had  his  own  little  mathematical  experience. 
Human  personality  and  everything  belonging  to  it  are  very 
private — even  though  privacy  is  by  no  means  the  whole  truth 
concerning  them.  No  other  being,  human  or  divine,  can  occupy 
the  seat  of  my  individuality,  and  look  at  facts  with  the  eyes  of 
my  soul  or  with  my  volitions.  But  we  cannot  conclude  from 
this  that  every  experience  I  happen  to  have  had  is  out  of  reach 
of  criticism.  It  may  be  misleading  even  to  myself.  The  pri- 
vacy of  an  experience  is  no  test  of  its  value.  Otherwise  all  ex- 
perience would  be  true  and  good.  We  should  ask,  rather, 
whether  truth  is  ever  a  private  affair,  and  nothing  more.  IVIust 
what  is  true  not  be  true  for  every  intelligence  that  can  appre- 
hend it?  And  what  of  the  Good?  It  cannot  be  willed  except 
privately,  and  by  a  personality  which  is,  at  least  in  one  sense, 
lonely  and  exclusive.    But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  Good  has  an 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  69 

intrinsic  and  universal  character  which  depends  upon  no  indi- 
vidual, not  even  upon  God.  Or,  is  the  moral  w^orld  made  up  of 
beings  every  one  of  whom  has  his  own  private  moral  code,  and 
special  kind  of  virtues,  which  no  one  else  can  share?  On  the 
contrary,  the  universality,  the  community  of  spiritual  realities  is, 
to  say  the  least,  as  real  and  as  fundamental  as  their  individual- 
ity. "To  every  one  his  own  Religion,"  in  an  exclusive  sense,  is 
as  absurd  as — "To  every  one  his  own  Mathematics."  Reconcile 
the  privacy  or  singularity  and  the  community  of  different  ex- 
periences as  we  may,  it  is  evident  that  neither  religion  nor  any 
other  kind  of  rational  experience  can  lack  either  of  these  two 
characters. 

But  the  validity  or  truth  of  an  experience  lies  in  its  univer- 
sality, and  in  no  sense  in  its  privacy.  The  experience  as  an 
occurrence,  or  event,  or  process,  or  fact  is  personal,  like  my 
holding  this  pen  at  this  moment.  As  mere  happenings  all  ex- 
periences are  on  the  same  level.  They  mean  nothing,  and,  there- 
fore, cannot  be  true  or  false  till  they  are  dealt  with  by  the  in- 
telligence. But  the  moment  meaning  or  worth  is  attributed  to  a 
matter  of  experience,  the  moment  it  is  held  to  be  true  or  false, 
good  or  bad,  that  moment  the  experience  has  become  an  inter- 
preted and  evaluated  fact,  an  object  of  observation  and  judg- 
ment, a  thing  in  the  object-world,  standing  over  against  the 
knowing  mind,  just  as  truly  as  the  pole-star.  That  a  man  is 
moved  by  a  religious  faith  is  thus  one  thing,  that  his  faith  is 
valid  or  valuable  is  quite  another.  The  subjective  side  of  ex- 
perience furnishes  no  test.  Men  have  been  deeply  moved  by 
bad  religious  beliefs,  and  they  have  done  "heroic  deeds"  of  the 
most  atrocious  kind. 

It  remains  that  the  objective  side  of  religious  faith,  as  of 
all  other  beliefs,  is  that  which  counts.  "By  their  fruits  shall 
ye  know  them."  Things  declare  their  nature  by  what  they  do. 
They  are  what  they  do.  In  no  way,  or  degree,  can  religious 
belief  escape  the  tests  we  apply  to  other  convictions.  Its  claim 
to  be  true  and  not  false  brings  religion  out  into  the  open. 
It  is  liable  to  be  attacked  by  the  whole  world,  and,  if  it  is  true, 
it  is  capable  of  being  upheld  and  ratified  by  the  whole  world. 


70  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

Indeed,  so  far  from  being  less  a  matter  for  the  intelligence  than 
others,  less  liable  to  attack,  or  less  capable  of  support,  it  is  much 
more.  Religion  claims  ultimate  truth  and  final  worth.  It 
comes  forth  as  the  supreme  interpreter.  If  religion  is,  in  its 
nature,  true,  then  it  must  provide  the  possibility  of  reconciling 
all  the  contradictions  of  existence  and  perverse  incongruities  of 
man's  behaviour  and  apparent  destiny.  Its  truth  will  be  justly 
tested  and  tried  and  even  doubted  as  long  as  there  is  one  inci- 
dent that  has  not  found  its  fitting  place.  Religion  cannot  be 
true  now  and  then  or  here  and  there  only,  any  more  than 
Mathematics  can.  On  the  other  hand,  if  religion  is  in  its 
essence  a  delusion,  then,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  the  whole  order  of 
the  universe  collapses.  For  religion  professes  to  reveal  the  ulti- 
mate principle  of  that  order.  The  only  alternative  that  lies 
before  the  sceptic  is  the  view,  that  at  the  heart  of  the  real  there 
lurks  the  insane. 

Religion  must  to  the  end  of  time,  for  mankind  as  a  whole, 
swing  somewhere  between  these  two  extremes.  It  must  be  the 
healing  of  all  man's  sorrows,  if  it  is  to  heal  any  of  them.  Hence 
any  new  event,  any  fresh  sorrow,  or  any  added  ill,  summons 
religion  before  the  bar  and  tries  its  sufficiency.  Religion  is  al- 
ways on  its  trial,  always  under  judgment,  and  it  is  on  its  part 
always  judging  man  and  pronouncing  his  destiny.  Ages  and 
individuals  may  vary  indefinitely  as  to  the  degree  and  the 
grounds  of  their  belief  or  unbelief.  There  are  individuals,  and 
possibly  there  have  been  ages,  so  peaceful  or  so  triumphant  that 
the  hardest  of  all  trials  brings  to  them  no  devastating  doubts. 
Their  faith  is 

"Safe  like  the  signet-stone  with  the  new  name 
That  saints  are  known  by." 

Their  God  is  not  dead  but  living,  and  he  is  not  far  away. 
They  lie  upon  his  bosom  always.  Such  souls  as  these  we  have 
seen.  They  have  the  beauty  of  flowers  and  their  sweet  mod- 
esty. There  are  other  souls,  however,  and  these  are  the  greater 
helpers  of  mankind  as  a  rule,  who,  like  tall  oaks,  must  battle 
with  all  the  winds  of  heaven.    These  greater  servants  of  man, 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  71 

these  Redeemers  of  the  world,  have  not  laboured  their  life-long 
under  a  clear  sky.  They  have  striven  in  darkness  with  despair 
and  doubt.  Who  was  it  who  cried,  "Eloi,  Eloi,  lama  sabach- 
thani"  ?  Do  you  think  that  his  despair,  the  conviction  that  God 
had  already  abandoned  him,  was  unreal  ?  He  asked  not  whether 
but  why.  And  do  we  not  hear  the  ring  of  battle,  even  in  the 
song  of  triumph  of  St.  Paul,  as  it  breaks  out  in  the  battle's 
pause?  It  was,  verily,  no  carpet  knight  who  challenged  the 
powers  and  cried,  "Who  shall  separate  us  from  the  love  of 
Christ?  Shall  tribulation,  or  distress,  or  persecution,  or  famine, 
or  nakedness,  or  peril  or  sword  ?  .  .  .  Nay,  in  all  these  things 
we  are  more  than  conquerors  through  him  that  loved  us."  ^ 
The  heroes  of  the  religious  life 

"Grapple   danger,  whereby  souls   grow   strong," 

and  they  prove  anew  that — "All,  to  the  very  end,  is  trial."  And 
the  trial  is  not  at  its  height  so  long  as  any  faith  in  final  issues 
remain,  and  there  is  any  outlook  onward.  It  is  a  fiery,  it  is  a 
life-or-death  trial,  not  when  a  particular  item  in  a  creed  or  a 
particular  kind  of  religion  fails,  but  when  the  truth  and  possi- 
bility of  any  religion  is  uncertain.  As  long  as  any  good  sur- 
vives and  is  unconquerable,  any  Best  on  which  man  may  place 
either  his  trust  or  his  life,  things  are  not  at  their  worst.  The 
waters  of  the  deluge  have  begun  to  "assuage"  already  if  there 
is  food  on  the  earth,  were  it  only  for  ravens.  But  the  failure 
of  religion  is  the  collapse  of  the  hypothesis  on  which  every  true 
or  real  good  rests.  If  the  perfect  is  not,  then  are  all  minor 
degrees  of  good  unreliable:  man  dare  not  lean  against  them. 
The  Universe  were  an  arch  without  a  key-stone. 

It  is  for  this  reason  that  I  call  religious  faith  the  supreme 
hypothesis,  because  religion  bears  upon  the  whole  destiny  of 
man  and  of  all  that  he  values,  as  does  the  scientific  hypothesis 
upon  all  that  comes  within  the  borders  of  the  science.  There  is 
nothing  real  except  in  virtue  of  it,  nothing  intelligible  except 
in  its  light.  If  the  hypothesis  breaks  down,  nothing  remains 
except  unintelligible  chaotic  particulars. 

^Romans  viii.  35  and  37. 


72  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

There  would  be  less  reluctance  to  call  religious  faith  "a 
hypothesis,"  if  the  functions  of  hypothesis  in  knowledge  and  in 
practical  life  were  better  known.  But  we  are  least  aware  and 
most  oblivious  of  the  value  of  those  conditions  of  well-being 
which  are  at  once  permanent  and  universal.  The  gifts  that 
come  to  man  by  inheritance,  as  potencies  in  his  very  structure  at 
birth;  the  treasury  of  slowly  accumulated  traditions  and  habits 
of  living  into  which  he  enters  little  by  little,  day  by  day,  as  a 
member  of  society,  are  by  far  the  richest  of  all  his  possessions. 
But  they  are  not  even  known  to  exist  until  reflection  enters,  and 
those  who  reflectively  reconstruct  their  experience  are  very  few. 
The  absence  of  these  elements,  the  foreign  make  of  the  soul  of  a 
neighbour,  may  reveal  their  value.  So  it  is  with  the  hypotheses 
on  which  depends  the  order  of  the  world  and  the  possibility  of 
rational  conduct  therein:  I  mean  the  hypotheses  of  morality 
and  free  religion;  the  conviction  that  the  spiritual  powers  are 
in  the  last  resort  dominant,  and  that  there  is  nothing  finally 
good  except  goodness.  Their  presence  and  their  use  are  uni- 
versal, but  the  recognition  of  them  is  rare. 

Except  for  hypotheses,  facts  and  events  would  seem  to  us  to 
stand  in  no  relation  of  any  kind  to  one  another.  We  could 
not  call  some  of  them  causes  and  some  of  them  effects:  for 
causality  is  a  hypothesis  or  conjectured  relation.  No  one  has 
ever  actually  perceived  a  cause.  According  to  Hume  we  can 
perceive  only  sequence;  if  the  sequence  is  unvaried  and  we 
expect  it  to  be  invariable,  we  call  it  a  "cause."  Again,  looking 
within  ourselves  w&  aflBrm  that  we  are  selves,  or  have  souls. 
On  what  grounds?  We  are  told  on  all  hands  that  we  have 
never  perceived  our  self  or  our  soul  as  a  fact,  apart  from  its 
passive  and  active  changes.  What  we  perceive — at  best — are 
occurrences,  activities,  feelings,  thoughts,  volitions;  but  of  the 
self  supposed  to  lie  beneath,  in  which  these  events  seem  to  occur, 
we  have  no  direct  evidence.  The  idea  of  a  soul  or  self  is  on 
this  view  another  explanatory  supposition.  We  are  told  that 
we  merely  assume,  or  form  the  hypothesis,  of  a  continuity  be- 
hind these  events  and  changes,  and  we  give  the  name  "soul"  or 
"self"  to  it. 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  73 

It  is  usual  to  regard  hypotheses  as  the  rare  products  of  rare 
minds  during  moments  of  inspiration.  They  are  supposed  to 
be  inventions  of  the  imagination,  intuitive  creations  that  seem  to 
spring  up  of  themselves,  lightning  flashes  from  a  blue  sky,  due 
neither  to  objects  nor  to  mental  effort.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
they  are  born  from  the  intercourse  of  mind  and  objects  like  all 
other  knovi^ledge;  and  as  I  have  tried  to  show,  they  are  as 
genuine  a  result  of  the  previous  interaction  of  the  inner  and 
outer  conditions  of  know^ing  as  any  other  conceptions.  No 
doubt  there  is  an  instant  w^hen  "the  light  breaks,"  the  happen- 
ing of  v^^hat  seems  new.  And  we  cannot  explain  it.  Nor  do 
we  realize  that  to  try  to  explain  "the  new"  is  absurd.  It  is  to 
try  to  prove  that  it  really  is  not  new ;  for  the  explanation  of  an 
object  runs  it  back  to  a  previous  state  and  finds  it  there.  We 
cannot,  in  fact,  catch  change  and  arrest  it  in  the  act. 

As  regards  even  the  simpler  changes,  like  the  transmutations 
of  physical  energy,  they  occur  we  know  not  well  how.  But  first 
there  is  one  form,  then  there  is  another,  and  there  is  a  fixed  and 
definite  quantitative  relation  between  the  two  forms.  This  rela- 
tion the  Physicist  will  reveal  to  us;  and  as  his  science  pro- 
gresses he  finds  ever  new  stages  or  differences  or  "links,"  which 
are  a  more  and  more  suggestive  revelation  of  the  reality  which 
changes.  For  change  implies  both  of  these  opposed  aspects.  It 
is  never  known  except  as  a  process  in  and  of  a  continuous  reality, 
and  that  reality  is  never  found  except  in  the  succession  of  its 
differences.  And  these  two,  the  continuous  and  the  changing, 
the  same  and  the  different,  the  one  and  the  many,  mean  nothing 
apart  and  must  be  grasped  in  their  relation. 

The  occurrence  of  the  new  is  thus  characteristic  of  all  grow- 
ing experience,  however  stunted  it  may  be.  And  Ave  err  greatly 
in  confining  our  notions  of  hypotheses  to  those  great  scientific 
occasions  on  which  a  new  science  is  born,  or  born  again — as 
when  a  Copernicus,  Newton  or  Darwin  makes  his  revolutionary 
contributions.  Maturing  experience,  which  finds  new  depths 
of  meaning  in  old  truths,  exemplifies  the  operation  of  hypotheses 
in  a  more  peaceful  way.  The  same  miracle  happens  whenever 
the  puzzled  mind  extricates  itself  from  a  difficulty,  masters  a 


74  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

problem,  and  cries,  "I  see."  Such  vision  always  seems  sudden, 
and  it  is  an  event,  and  an  event  of  great  importance.  For  the 
conception,  mere  guess  though  it  seems  at  first,  illuminates  with 
meaning  the  whole  extent  of  the  material  to  which  it  is  applied. 
More  acurately,  the  meaning  that  was  in  the  material  all  along 
is  discovered.  The  facts  express  themselves  more  fully  in  the 
new  mental  process  which  supervenes  when  the  two  related 
factors  of  knowledge  co-operate. 

That  every  step  in  the  growth  of  knowledge  comes  through 
this  outbreak  of  hypotheses,  that  the  operation  of  hypotheses  is 
universal,  only  enhances  their  significance.  There  is  every- 
where, in  different  degrees,  evidence  of  their  illuminating 
power.  They  explain  what  was  unintelligible  before,  connect 
what  seemed  to  be  mere  irrelevant  and  scattered  contingencies, 
and  they  culminate  in  systems  whose  elements  fit  into  and  sup- 
port each  other.  The  details  of  the  system  illustrate  the  hy- 
potheses, and  the  hypotheses  reveal  the  real  being  of  the  details. 
For  the  universal  is  the  truth  of  the  particulars,  and  the  par- 
ticulars are  the  manifestations  of  the  universal. 

It  is  not  easy  to  exaggerate  the  significance  of  hypotheses. 
Their  coming  is  the  dawn  of  order  and  the  fixing  of  the  firma- 
ment— a  feat  of  creation.  No  least  fact  within  the  domain 
of  the  new  conception  remains  unaffected,  either  in  its  rank 
and  value,  or  in  its  use  and  meaning.  It  becomes  an  item  in  a 
new  world  and  one  of  the  foci  of  its  universal  laws.  It  derives 
its  being,  its  force  and  function  from  the  new  principle,  and 
it  supports  it  in  turn.  For  the  scheme  of  which  a  hypothesis  is 
the  principle  is  a  system  in  equipoise,  like  the  planetary  system. 
It  is  not  a  building  resting  on  a  foundation.  There  is  no  truth 
that  has  independent,  separate,  axiomatic  validity,  any  more 
than  there  can  be  a  moral  principle  that  has  not  the  moral 
universe  at  its  back.  Every  part  of  a  system  of  knowledge,  in 
so  far  as  it  is  true,  sustains  and  is  sustained  by  every  other: 
and  the  seat  of  its  life  is  everywhere,  and  most  in  evidence  where 
it  is  most  threatened.  The  defence  and  the  safety  of  the  whole 
belongs  to  every  part,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  whole  is  ex- 
posed to  the  peril  that  menaces  any  part.     In  truth,  the  rela- 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  75 

tion  of  whole  and  part  is  more  intense  than  that  of  any  living 
organism ;  for  facts  of  mind  interpenetrate  more  intimately  than 
physical  facts  and  events.    The  hypothesis  or  the  principle,  and 
its  applications,  have  one  destiny.     If  they  acquire  meaning,  or 
if  they  lose  it,  they  do  so  together.     And  the  significance  of 
their  inter-relation  is  alw^ays  the  same.     His  w^orld  comes  to 
pieces  in  the  plain  man's  hand  v^^hen  a  familiar  hypothesis  proves 
false,  just  as  a  mathematician's  w^ould  collapse  if  2  -f-  2  v^^ere 
shown  to  be  not  4,  but  5.    In  a  word,  the  power  of  hypotheses 
is  as  real  in  the  thinking  of  the  plain  man  as  in  that  of  Darwin. 
Moreover,   hypotheses   in    the   process   of   their   application 
acquire  meaning  and  security.    A  hypothesis  that  has  been  true 
from  the  first  becomes,  in  a  sense,   more  true  as  knowledge 
grows.     The  central  hypothesis,  if  valid,  is  ratified  more  and 
more  in  new  instances,  "gains  under  new  applications,"  as  we 
say,  and  gains  especially  when  its  application  was  unexpected, 
and  it  seems  to  explain  facts  that  appeared  to  be  remote  and 
unconnected  with  its  province.     As  its  domain  extends,  every 
item  within  its  authority  gains  fresh  meaning  and  use.     The 
hypothesis  of  Evolution,  first  effectively  applied  by  Darwin  to 
plants  and  animals,  not  only  created  the  science  of  Biology, 
but  threw  its  rays  into  other  fields.     At  first  it  was  supposed 
to  "animalize"  man  and  despiritualize  the  world;  but  in  the 
hands  of  modern  Idealism  that  conception  has  been  found  to 
yield  a  final  refutation  of  all  theories  that  account  for  results 
by  origins,  and  which  try  to  explain  the  last  in  terms  of  the 
first,  thereby  reducing  the  higher  to  the  level  of  the  low.    Evo- 
lution suggests  a  solution  of  the  ultimate  dualism  of  mind  and 
its  objects,  and  contains  the  promise  of  boundless  help  to  re- 
ligious   faith.      Existences   that   seemed    to    perish,    lives   that 
seemed  to  fail  and  utterly  pass  away,  become  in  its  light  stages 
an  unbroken  history.     For  evolution  is  not  only  a  conception 
that  opens  out  into  the  future  a  boundless  vista:    it  also  re- 
deems the  past.      Instead   of   the  wide  waste   of   lost  causes 
that  human  history  presented,  each  little  life  reaching  at  best 
its  little  ends  and  then,  so  far  as  its  earthly  career  went,  per- 
ishing forever,  we  find  that  its  meaning  and  substance  are  car- 


76  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

ried  forward  into  the  very  structure  of  the  present.  The  past 
does  not  perish ;  its  passing  away  is  superficial  appearance. 
In  matters  of  mind  and  character,  above  all  others,  what  was 
persists.  The  thoughts  and  deeds  become  propensities,  beliefs, 
purposes,  principles  of  action,  habits  and  capacities. 

There  is  hardly  any  science,  or  any  region  of  man's  vital 
interests,  in  which  the  significance  of  the  conception  of  evolu- 
tion has  not  become  evident.  And,  for  my  part,  the  value  and 
power  of  religion  must  receive  measureless  expansion  when  its 
fundamental  truths  are  regarded  and  dealt  with  in  the  same 
way:  not  as  authoritative  dogmata,  not  as  revelations  from 
without  or  from  beyond  the  facts  themselves,  not  as  fixed  and 
unalterable;  but  as  the  best  explanation  we  can  find,  as  the 
essential  truth  and  innermost  value  of  the  facts  of  man's  ever}'- 
day  life  in  this  everyday  world. 

Now,  the  hypothesis  on  which  religion  rests  is  comprehensive 
and  daring  beyond  all  others.  And  the  more  developed  the  re- 
ligion the  more  stupendous  its  daring.  In  all  the  Universe,  for 
religious  faith,  I  repeat  once  more,  there  can  be  no  fact  ulti- 
mately out  of  hand :  there  can  be  no  legitimate  purposes  which 
are  not  reconciled,  and  no  interests  which,  in  the  last  resort, 
are  not  within  the  grasp  of  law,  and  modes  of  working  of  what 
is  Perfect.  And  the  reconciliation  is  not  of  mere  aspects,  nor 
of  shallow  appearances.  On  the  contran^,  where  the  religious 
hypothesis  has  gripped  the  soul,  and  become  a  belief  on  which 
a  man  dares  to  live,  the  contradictions  of  pain,  suffering,  yea, 
the  suffering  of  the  innocent,  and  sin  itself,  are  somehow  held 
to  be  overcome.  We  have  but  to  follow  out  their  history  to 
find  that,  real  as  they  are,  their  destiny  is  to  serve.  The  Perfect 
is  found  every^vhere  in  power.  "If  I  ascend  up  into  heaven, 
thou  art  there;  if  I  make  my  bed  in  hell,  behold  thou  art  there. 
If  I  take  the  wings  of  the  morning  and  dwell  in  the  utter- 
most parts  of  the  sea ;  even  there  shall  thy  hand  lead  me,  and 
thy  right  hand  shall  hold  me."  ^ 

But,  surely,  it  will  be  said,  the  religious  hypothesis  is,  accord- 
ing to  such  a  doctrine,  the  most  insecure  as  well  as  the  most 

iPs.  cxxxix.  8,  9,   10. 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  77 

daring  of  all  constructive  conceptions;  whereas  religious  faith 
is  absolute  trust,  a  giving  utterly  and  finally  away  not  only  of 
this  or  that  private  interest  but  of  the  very  self.  No  hypothesis, 
as  a  hypothesis,  can  ever  be  finally  proved:  human  knowledge 
is  never  complete.  And  yet,  the  hypothesis  must  be  ready  to 
answer  every  call.  It  is  at  the  mercy  of  every  fact  or  event 
that  seems  to  refuse  to  fit  into  the  system  which  the  hypothesis 
informs. 

What  shall  we  say  to  these  objections?  Both  of  them  are, 
so  far  as  I  can  see,  valid:  but  within  their  own  region,  they 
can  be  urged  in  the  same  way  against  all  hypotheses,  even  those 
of  Mathematics.  No  hypothesis  is  completely  worked  out ;  and 
every  hypothesis  breaks  down  when  faced  with  one  genuinely 
contradictory  instance.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  we  do  not 
reject  a  hypothesis  on  the  ground  that  we  have  not  been  able 
to  apply  it  to  a  particular  case,  nor  do  we  represent  it  as  what 
surpasses  human  comprehension.  And  this  is  the  measure 
which  is  usually  meted  to  the  religious  hypothesis.  We  think 
that  natural  laws  are  constant  and  that  all  physical  events  have 
causes,  even  though  we  cannot  account  for  the  changes  of  the 
weather  or  measure  the  forces  that  toss  the  tree-tops.  "Not 
proven"  is  not  mis-interpreted  and  regarded  as  "dis-proved." 
But  if  we  cannot  trace  the  goodness  of  God  in  an  untoward 
incident  or  calamity,  especially  if  the  calamity  has  fallen  upon 
ourselves,  we  are  prone  to  deny  his  existence,  or  his  power  or 
his  goodness.  The  apparent  exception  to  a  natural  law,  as  the 
history  of  science  has  frequently  shown,  often  turns  into  the 
most  striking  proof  of  the  validity  of  the  hypothesis.  The  ap- 
parent exception  in  religion  is  at  once  assumed  to  disprove  its 
validity. 

Now,  in  all  these  matters  the  reliious  and  the  scientific 
hypotheses  are  in  character  the  same.  There  are  no  differences 
except  those  which  spring  from  the  comprehensiveness  and  the 
finality  of  the  religious  hypothesis.  The  scientific  hypothesis 
applies  only  to  an  aspect  or  a  department  of  what  is  real,  and 
is  always  dependent  on  conceptions  which  have  not  been  proved. 
Hence  its  validity  can  be  directly  challenged,  and  it  can  be 


78  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

either  ratified  or  rejected  by  the  facts  of  its  own  limited  field. 
But  a  fundamental  religious  hypothesis  is  challenged  and  im- 
perilled from  every  quarter;  and  for  the  same  reason,  if  it  is 
valid,  it  is  not  beyond  the  reach  of  doubt  till  it  is  verified  in 
every  quarter.  If  God  is,  and  if  he  is  perfect  in  love  and 
power,  then  the  whole  realm  of  things  natural  and  spiritual, 
when  it  is  interpreted  in  the  fulness  of  its  meaning,  will  be 
found  to  illustrate  and  establish  these  truths.  If  not,  then,  so 
far  as  I  can  see,  no  reasonable  account  of  the  apparent  order 
of  the  universe  can  be  offered.  To  call  it  the  work  of  chance, 
as  the  sceptic  used  to  do,  is  to  make  a  larger  and  more  impossi- 
ble demand  than  any  religion  makes. 

"I  say  the  acknowledgment  of  God  in  Christ 
Accepted  by  thy  reason,  solves  for  thee 
All  questions  in  the  earth  and  out  of  it,"  ^ 

says  Browning.     In  the  whole  Universe  there  was  for  him 

"No  detail  but,  in  place  allotted  it,  was  prime 
And  perfect." " 

On  the  other  hand,  one  instance  of  the  failure  of  the  hypothesis 
to  render  the  true  and  ultimate  meaning  of  any  fact,  one  event 
ultimately  irreconcilable  with  the  hypothesis  would  destroy  it. 

"Of  absolute  and  irretrievable 
And  all-subduing  black — black's  soul  of  black, 
Beyond  white's  power  to  disintensify 
Of  that  I  saw  no  sample:  Such  may  wreck 
My  life  and  ruin  my  philosophy."  ^ 

Nor  is  it  enough  that  wrongs  and  ills  should  be  rectified  in  the 
end,  and  that  there  should  be  some  inexhaustible  recompense. 
The  whole  of  the  confused  and,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  cruel 
history  of  the  struggle  of  beast  with  beast  and  man  with  man 
and  both  with  nature,  must,  somehow,  prove  to  be  at  ever}- 
step  the  fulfilment  of  a  perfect  will,  which  to  the  Christian 
means  a  Will  which  is  all  Love.     Nature  itself,  on  this  view, 

^A  Death  in  the  Desert.      -Browning,  Fifine  af  the  Fair.       M  Bcan-Stripc. 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  79 

must  be  interpreted  in  a  way  that  directly  contradicts  the  tenets 
of  both  the  theology  and  the  science  of  the  end  of  the  last 
century.  Nature  was  an  obstacle  to  the  spiritual  life  according 
to  the  former;  and  for  the  latter,  as  represented  by  Huxley,  it 
was  the  scene  of  struggle  for  existence,  and  either  directly  an- 
tagonistic or  entirely  alien  to  the  moral  life  of  man.  Now  it 
is  seen  that  its  purpose  and  meaning  must  reach  beyond  that  of 
a  sublime  cosmos.  Seen  in  the  context  of  that  which  is  spir- 
itual, and  in  the  light  of  religion,  nature  must  be  found  to  have 
a  spiritual  significance  in  and  through  its  product,  man. 

And  if  we  turn  to  man  himself,  there  we  must  find,  if  this 
hypothesis  be  true,  evidence  of  one,  and  only  one  process — the 
process  of  producing  the  highest,  namely,  moral  character.  So 
far,  we  have  been  prone  to  be  satisfied  with  looking  for  the 
power  of  religion  only  in  the  life  of  the  saints  and  mystics,  as 
they  stood  the  strain  of  imprisonment,  torture,  death  and  the 
contempt  of  men.  But  the  validity  and  inexpressible  value  of 
religious  faith  will  seem  almost  more  convincing  if  we  witness 
its  power  in  inconspicuous  and  unrecorded  lives.  How  can  we 
overlook  the  splendour  of  the  religious  hypothesis,  if  we  observe 
how  the  consciousness  of  God's  presence  and  irradiating  love 
accompanies  the  mother  as  she  goes  about  her  domestic  duties, 
or  sits  at  the  bed  of  her  sick  child;  or  as  it  attends,  as  the 
silent  background  of  his  life,  the  labourer  in  the  field,  the  crafts- 
man in  his  workshop,  the  man  of  business  behind  his  counter  or 
in  his  office,  making  their  lives  clean  and  human  and  beautiful 
and  the  obvious  service  of  the  Best.  There  could  be  no  more 
signal  proof  of  the  power  and  truth  of  religion  than  its  capacity 
to  penetrate  and  convert  the  economic  spirit  of  these  times. 

The  religious  man  when  he  looks  around  seems  to  me  to  be 
entitled  to  say  that  while  the  religious  hypothesis,  like  all 
others,  is  never  finally  proved,  it  is  always  and  everywhere  in 
the  act  of  being  proved.  It  is  the  one  thing  that  is  being  done 
throughout  creation.  It  is  the  experiment — the  Grand  Perhaps 
of  the  Universe,  on  which  both  nature  and  spirit  are  engaged. 
The  consciousness  of  the  omnipresence  of  the  unutterable  good- 
ness of  the  Divine  Being  is  being  gradually  deepened.     There 


80  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

is  no  incident  in  man's  life,  no  outer  circumstance  in  his  world, 
but  at  the  magic  touch  of  religious  faith  will  be  heard  by 
the  religious  spirit  to  testify  to  the  unlimited  goodness  of 
God. 

I  admit  at  once  that  the  fulness  of  religious  trust  does  not 
prove  the  truth  of  the  religious  hypothesis.  Men  have  trusted 
their  very  souls  to  errors  and  delusions.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  if  there  are  certain  forms  of  the  religious  faith,  certain 
hypotheses,  which  deepen  the  meaning  of  natural  facts,  which 
amplify  and  extend  the  suggestiveness  of  the  natural  sciences, 
and  so  far  from  traversing  their  findings,  accept  and  invite 
them;  and  if  in  the  world  of  human  conduct  they  dignify 
human  character,  add  reach  and  sanity  to  man's  aims,  construct 
and  consolidate  human  society,  elevate  and  secure  the  life  of 
man  and  make  for  peace  and  mutual  helpfulness  amongst  the 
nations — if,  in  one  word,  a  form  of  religious  faith,  or  hypoth- 
esis, works  in  these  ways,  then,  indeed,  is  the  proof  of  its  valid- 
ity strong;  stronger  than  the  proof  of  any  other  hypothesis, 
because  wider  and  deeper.  The  truth  or  falsity  of  the  religious 
hypothesis  is  manifestly  the  paramount  issue  for  man ;  and,  one 
might  expect,  would  overcome  the  indifference  which  is  char- 
acteristic both  of  the  shallow  belief  and  of  the  shallow  scepti- 
cism of  our  time. 

It  is  on  this  account  that  we  are  entitled,  in  all  earnestness 
as  well  as  with  respect  and  yearning  love  for  their  cause,  to 
urge  the  analogy  of  the  method  and  spirit  of  the  natural  sciences 
upon  our  religious  teachers.  After  all,  it  is  this  method  that 
Philip  used  in  order  to  convince  Nathanael.  When  the  latter 
doubted  if  they  had  found  him  of  whom  Moses  in  the  Law  and 
Prophets  wrote,  in  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  son  of  Joseph,  he  asked 
Philip,  "Can  there  any  good  thing  come  out  of  Nazareth?" 
The  answer  was — "Come  and  see."  The  same  answer  ought 
to  be  offered  by  the  Protestant  Church  to  every  enquirer  in 
every  age.  The  Church  as  teacher  must  learn  to  represent  its 
beliefs  not  as  dogmas  but  as  truths  which  it  challenges  the  dis- 
believing world  to  put  to  the  test,  and  to  the  hardest  tests  it 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  81 

can  find  even  amongst  the  worst  intricacies  of  the  pathetic 
tragedies  of  human  life.  It  will  thus  find  that  reason  will 
serve  religion  as  soon  as  religion  allows  reason  to  be  free.  Till 
then  there  must  be  conflict,  and  loss  on  both  sides. 


LECTURE  VII 

RELIGIOUS  LIFE  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

I  HAVE  been  trying  to  make  plain  the  function  of  hypotheses, 
not  only  in  science,  but  in  the  ordinary  affairs  of  the  everyday 
life  of  plain  men. 

Two  considerations  combine  to  induce  me  to  dwell  a  little 
longer  on  this  topic,  even  at  the  cost  of  some  repetition.  The 
first  is  the  fact  that  the  nature  of  hypotheses  and  the  part  they 
play  are  very  often  misunderstood.  Their  use  is  supposed  to 
be  confined  to  the  natural  sciences,  and,  so  far  from  being 
recognized  in  other  fields  as  fundamental  principles  which 
give  systematic  coherence  to  the  facts,  they  are  there  supposed 
to  be  irresponsible  guesses  and  nothing  more.  The  second 
consideration  arises  from  the  greatness  of  the  change  that  would 
follow  were  the  Protestant  Churches  and  their  leaders  to  as- 
sume the  attitude  of  the  sciences  and  treat  the  articles  of  the 
creeds  not  as  dogmas  but  as  the  most  probable  explanation, 
the  most  sane  account  which  they  can  form  of  the  relation  of 
man  to  the  Universe  and  of  the  final  meaning  of  his  life.  The 
hypothesis  of  a  God  whose  wisdom  and  power  and  goodness 
are  perfect  would  then  be  tried  and  tested,  both  theoretically 
and  practically,  and,  I  believe,  become  thereby  ever  the  more 
convincing.  The  creed  would  be  not  merely  a  record  of  an  old 
belief  to  be  accepted  on  authority,  but  a  challenge  to  the  sceptic 
and  the  irreligious.  The  Church,  instead  of  being  a  place 
where  the  deliverances  of  ancient  religious  authorities  are  ex- 
pounded, and  illustrated  by  reference  to  the  contents  of  one 
book  and  the  history  of  one  nation — as  if  no  other  books  were 
inspired  and   all   nations  save  one  were  God-abandoned — the 

82 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  83 

Church  would  be  the  place  where  the  validity  of  spiritual 
convictions  are  discussed  on  their  merits,  and  the  application 
of  spiritual  principles  extended;  where  enquiring  youths  would 
repair  when  life  brings  them  sorrow,  disappointment  or  failure, 
and  the  injustice  of  man  makes  them  doubt  whether  there  be 
a  God,  or  if  there  be,  whether  he  is  good  and  has  power,  and 
stands  as  the  help  of  man.  Recourse  to  their  certified  spiritual 
guides,  knowing  that  full  and  sympathetic  justice  will  be  done 
to  all  their  difficulties,  ought  to  be  as  natural  to  them  as  their 
recourse  to  the  physical  laboratory  or  the  workshop  of  the 
mechanician  when  an  engine  breaks  down. 

But  the  Church  has  a  long  way  to  travel  before  it  creates  a 
faith  and  a  trust  such  as  we  accord  to  the  natural  sciences; 
and  mankind,  on  its  part,  is  far  from  meting  the  same  measure 
to  the  faith  or  life-hypotheses  of  the  religious  man  as  it  will- 
ingly accords  to  the  man  of  science.  Let  me  exemplify  this 
charge. 

Not  all  the  physicists  in  the  world  could  account  for  and 
measure  all  the  forces  spent  as  the  rumbling  gravel-grinding 
cart  is  dragged  past  one's  window.  Not  all  the  physicists  in 
the  world  can  indicate  precisely  and  measure  exactly  the  forces 
that  go  to  change  the  colour  and  shape  of  a  cloud  from  that 
of  a  camel  to  an  island  lake.  Nor  could  they  measure  and 
indicate  the  paths  of  the  forces  that  twirl  the  falling  leaf 
round  and  round  as  it  falls  to  the  earth.  And  the  chemist 
would  be  quite  at  a  loss  to  give  an  exhaustive  account  of  the 
changes  which  take  place  as  that  fallen  leaf  gradually  rots  and 
turns  into  soil.  But  no  one  for  a  moment  doubts  either  the 
physicist  or  the  chemist  when  they  aver  the  presence  and  oper- 
ation in  these  changes  of  unerring  laws.  And  yet  they  have 
never  proved  the  presence  and  operation  of  such  laws,  except 
under  the  simplified  and  artificial  conditions  of  their  labora- 
tories. We  distinguish  readily  between  what  is  not  proved  and 
what  is  ^^--proved  when  we  are  dealing  with  natural  phe- 
nomena, but  in  matters  of  religion  we  take  no  such  care.  A 
single  disaster,  loss  or  sorrow,  especially  if  it  be  our  own, 
makes  us  doubt  the  existence  of  the  goodness  or  the  power  of 


84  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

God.  We  do  not  place  a  personal  bereavement  or  pain  in  its 
context,  nor  wait  for  final  issues.  No  more  do  we  lift  our  eyes 
so  as  to  apprehend  the  vastness  and  worth  of  the  scene  of  which 
it  is  an  item.  It  is  not  for  us  at  such  times  to  exclair*^,  like 
Lorenzo, 

"Look !  how  the  floor  of  heaven 
Is  thick  inlaid  with  patines  of  bright  gold: 
There's  not  the  smallest  orb  which  thou  behold'st 
But  in  his  motion  like  an  angel  sings, 
Still  quiring  to  the  young-ey'd  cherubins." 

The  evidence  of  the  cosmic  order,  the  marvel  of  the  beauty  of 
colour  and  sound  and  their  spendthrift  plentifulness,  above  all, 
the  stable  splendour  of  the  world  of  right  and  wrong  where 
spiritual  forces  play,  the  guidance  that  must  have  led  mankind 
from  the  crude  depths  of  a  cruel  and  cunning  animal  life  to  the 
love  of  the  good  for  its  own  sake:  all  this  in  the  presence  of 
a  personal  calamity  is  overlooked  or  forgotten,  and  we  are 
asked  to  yield  ourselves  to  a  faith  that  is  unrivalled  in  its 
stupidity,  namely,  to  attribute  the  order  of  the  Universe  and 
all  that  is  implied  therein  to  Chance! 

We  must  learn  to  mete  the  same  measure,  I  repeat,  to  the 
religious  as  we  do  to  the  scientific  spirit;  but  our  religious 
leaders  and  the  churches  must  win  our  trust  by  adopting  the 
same  frank  and  adventurous  methods  as  have  gained  the  confi- 
dence of  mankind  for  the  natural  sciences. 

But  magnify  the  significance  of  hypotheses  as  we  may,  it  will 
be  held  that  religious  faith  is  more  than  a  hypothesis.  The 
theoretical  comprehension  of  a  religious  truth  is  not  a  religious 
life.  However  close  the  connection  between  the  true  and  the 
good,  we  cannot  simply  identify  them;  and  however  intimate 
the  relation  between  knowing  and  doing,  between  having  an 
idea  and  carrying  it  out,  still  they  are  not  the  same.  Even  if 
we  admit  the  Socratic  doctrine  that  it  is  impossible  to  know 
the  good  and  not  do  it;  even  if  we  insist  that  ideas  have  hands 
and  feet,  that  experience  ripens  into  practice,  that  convictions 
naturally  turn  into  character,  and  that  ideas  are  simply  volitions 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  85 

arrested  in  mid-flight,  still  the  distinction  remains.  Truth,  at 
the  best,  is  but  the  recognition  of  that  which  is.  It  produces 
nothing.  It  changes  nothing.  Reason,  the  faculty  of  know- 
ing, observes  and  lets  the  world  remain  as  it  finds  it.  Accord- 
ing to  Hume  ^  it  cannot  even  furnish  motives,  and  it  has  no 
preferences  of  any  kind.  And  even  those  philosophers  who,  like 
Kant,  consider  that  Reason  has  a  practical  as  well  as  a  theoreti- 
cal function,  and  that  its  activities  are  a  condition  of  morality 
as  well  as  of  knowledge,  distinguish  between  these  two  spheres 
of  its  operations. 

That  these  views  contain  truth  is  certain,  but  that  they  are 
the  truth  is  another  matter.  It  is  possible  to  assume  a  purely 
theoretical  attitude  towards  religion;  and  no  one  can  for  a 
moment  fail  to  distinguish  between  it  and  the  practical  attitude. 
We  may  seek  to  know  the  history,  and  to  understand  religious 
phenomena  without  having  any  further  interest  in  them.  We 
may  treat  religious  beliefs  and  forms  of  worship  simply  as  ob- 
jects of  curiosity,  and  value  them  with  as  little  purpose  of 
making  use  of  them  as  the  antiquarian  has  of  making  use  of 
an  old  vase. 

All  the  same  it  is  an  error  to  consider  that  the  activities  of 
reason  are  sometimes  purely  theoretical  and  sometimes  purely 
practical,  or  that  theory  and  practice  fall  into  different  and 
exclusive  provinces.  They  are  much  more  closely  connected. 
In  the  first  place,  man  never  acts  at  all  as  mauj  i.e.,  as  a  rational 
being,  except  as  a  being  who  knows.  His  knowledge,  or  what 
stands  for  knowledge,  guides  him  even  when  he  is  not  aware 
of  it;  it  even  guides  his  habits.  Directly  or  indirectly  in  all 
human  conduct,  theory  guides  practice.  Even  the  simplest 
and  least  introspective  of  men  carries  out  purposes;  and  pur- 
poses are  ideas.  And  if  man  is  a  machine,  as  the  Determinists 
used  to  tell  us,  he  is  a  machine  that  thinks  first  and  acts  after- 
wards. 

In  the  second  place,  just  as  practice  implies  the  theoretic 
activity  of  the  intellect,  so,  on  the  other  hand,  the  theoretic 
use  of   the  intelligence   implies  the   operation   of   the  powers 

^Hume's  Treatise  on  Human  Nature,  ed.  of  Green  and  Grote,  vol.  ii.  193. 


86  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

deemed  practical.  There  is  purpose,  volition,  effort,  and  a  re- 
sulting change  involved  in  every  theoretic  enterprise,  simple 
or  complex.  In  fact,  the  difference  between  theory  and  practice 
lies  not  in  the  powers  or  activities  that  ente;  into  them,  but 
in  the  result  that  is  desired.  The  purpose  of  the  theoretic 
investigator  is  different  from  that  of  the  reformer  or  inventor 
or  manufacturer.  His  mind,  will,  desires,  feelings,  his  self  is 
engaged  in  producing  a  different  result  and  carrying  out  a  dif- 
ferent end.  To  attribute  theory  to  the  mere  intelligence  and 
practice  to  other  "faculties"  is,  once  more,  to  repeat  the  in- 
sistent error  of  the  psychologist. 

Not  less  misleading  is  it  to  maintain  that  in  matters  of  theory 
we  deal  with  facts  and  not  with  values,  and  that  in  matters 
of  practice  we  deal  with  values  rather  than  with  facts.  The 
investigator  engages  in  laborious  research  with  no  other  pur- 
pose than  that  of  discovering  a  truth,  but  he  may  set  high 
value  on  attaining  it.  The  solution  of  an  intellectual  difficulty, 
the  discovery  of  the  true  theory,  or  true  history  of  a  fact  or 
event  is  the  practical  result  that  he  desires,  and  he  may  deem 
his  life  well  spent  in  seeking  it.  In  short,  his  enquiry  bears 
every  mark  of  a  practical  activity.  He  is,  in  his  own  way, 
seeking  what  has  value,  and  is  pursuing  the  good  in  the  form 
in  which  it  appeals  to  him.  Not  only  does  it  engage  all  his 
powers,  but  it  forms  his  life,  fashions  his  character;  and  it  is 
only  the  crudest  ignorance  that  forgets  these  reactions  upon 
character.  And  it  remains  crude  ignorance  even  although 
otherwise  respectable  people  will  persist  in  distinguishing  the 
thinker  and  the  moralist,  and  those  who  are  engaged  in  the 
arts  of  life,  from  the  practical  man. 

But  the  results  of  the  theoretic  life  of  man  are  never  all 
subjective — even  if  the  solutions  he  offers  are  erroneous,  he 
has  probably  helped  to  true  knowledge;  and  if  he  discovers  a 
new  truth  and  adds  to  human  knowledge,  he  has  brought  into 
the  world  new  latent  energy  of  the  most  masterful  kind.  For 
it  is  seldom,  if  ever,  that  truth  is  powerless.  Knowing  for  the 
sake  of  knowing,  art  for  art's  sake,  the  doing  of  the  right  be- 
cause it  is  right,  all  alike  employ  the  whole  man;  all  alike  are 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  87 

practical,  and,  like  their  objects — the  true,  the  beautiful,  and 
the  good — these  activities  imply  one  another.  All  human  life 
is  at  once  theoretical  and  practical.  It  is  the  fundamental 
characteristic  of  rational  beings  that  they  act  from  purposes; 
and  purposes  are  at  once  thoughts  and  volitions,  and  are  charged 
w^ith  value  as  well  as  meaning.  The  true  and  the  good  are 
inseparable.  Each  has  its  ovrn  place  and  function,  and  either 
or  neither  may  be  the  higher,  for  each  includes  the  other. 

But  you  may  ask,  if  theory  and  practice  are  so  closely  related, 
how  would  you  distinguish  between  the  theory  of  religion  and 
religion  itself?  For  the  distinction  is  undeniable.  I  answer  as 
already  hinted :  their  purposes  difEer.  In  the  first  case  knowl- 
edge is  the  end  or  purpose  sought:  in  the  second  case  religion 
itself  as  a  way  of  life  is  the  aim  and  object  of  desire.  Above 
all,  religion  is  a  mere  means  in  the  first  case:  it  is  an  end  in 
the  second. 

It  has  been  maintained  that  the  nature  of  things  is  revealed 
by  the  purposes  to  which  they  can  be  put,  that  is  by  their  worth 
to  man.  But  this  depends  upon  how  far  the  nature  of  man  as 
a  rational  being  is  a  key  to  the  nature  of  the  world  in  which 
and  by  which  he  lives,  and  of  which,  according  to  natural 
science,  he  is  a  product.  Hence  the  final  appeal  as  to  the  nature 
of  a  thing  is  not  to  its  worth,  estimated  in  terms  of  its  use, 
not  to  its  relation  to  man,  but  to  its  relation  to  the  system  of 
reality  to  which  both  it  and  man  belong.  All  the  same  it  is 
becoming  more  and  more  clear  that,  in  interpreting  the  natural 
world,  its  most  complex  and,  it  is  believed,  its  highest  and 
most  comprehensive  and  marvellous  product,  namely,  an  animal 
that  thinks  and  distinguishes  between  right  and  wrong,  cannot 
be  left  out  of  account,  as  has  been  done  by  science  in  the  past. 
Nay  more,  man's  meaning,  which  is  ultimately  spiritual,  may 
best  convey  the  final  meaning  of  his  world.  In  any  case,  the 
purposes  to  which  man  has  put  the  forces  of  the  physical  world 
— purposes  which  are  themselves  his  interpretation  of  what  he 
wants  and  of  the  means  of  satisfying  his  wants — have  been  his 
chief  instruments  of  discovering  their  meaning.  What  elec- 
tricity is,  is  best  revealed  by  what  it  does;  and  it  does  most 


-> 


88  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

when  it  is  handled  by  the  man  of  science.  Every  purpose  which 
a  thing  satisfies,  every  use  to  which  it  is  put,  brings  out  some 
new  reaction  on  its  part,  and  exposes  a  new  feature. 

It  is  so  also  with  religion.  All  the  uses  to  which  religion  is 
put  exhibit  something  of  its  character.  And  the  uses  have  been 
and  still  are  many.  Men  have  punctually  performed  religious 
rites,  worshipped  their  God,  obeyed  his  behests,  acted  in  accord- 
ance with  what  they  considered  his  will,  for  the  most  different 
reasons.  It  has  been  their  means  of  escaping  torture  after 
death,  or  of  securing  happiness  hereafter,  or  of  attaining  social 
esteem,  or  power,  or  even  of  prospering  in  their  business.  All 
these  uses  reveal  something  of  the  nature  and  value  of  religion : 
but  the  revelation  is  incomplete  so  long  as  religion  is  used  as  a 
means  to  something  else.  It  shows  something  of  its  character 
in  every  context  or  reaction,  but  its  full  or  true  or  real  nature 
is  shown  only  when  it  is  in  itself  an  end.  However  effective 
religion  may  be  as  a  means  to  a  priest's  power,  or  as  a  weapon 
for  political  rule,  or  for  turning  aside  the  flames  of  hell,  they 
do  not  show  what  it  is  intrinsically.  On  the  contrary,  the 
most  conscientious  use  of  religion  for  purposes  beyond  itself  we 
would  hesitate  to  regard  as  true  religion,  or  even  as  religion 
at  all.  True  religion  is  an  end  in  and  for  itself,  and  never 
mere  means.  It  is  of  itself  an  object  of  desire,  and  any  conse- 
quences it  may  bring,  borrow  from  it  all  their  value,  but  in 
themselves  are  not  regarded.  Though  heaven  and  earth  pass 
away,  though  there  be  no  future  life,  devotion  to  the  Best,  the 
religious  life,  retains  its  value.  Its  value  is  in  itself.  It  is 
a  form  of  the  good,  indeed  the  completest  form  of  the  good 
that  is  absolute.  "Let  me  but  be  reconciled  with  my  God," 
says  the  repentant  sinner.  "Let  me  be  my  Father's,"  says  the 
saint,  "reserving  nothing,  devoted,  lost  and  found  in  His  ser- 
vices for  ever  more;  what  else  can  be?" 

This  devotedness,  or  devoutness,  is  the  characteristic  feature 
of  true  religion.  It  is  such  an  intense  living  for  an  object  that 
it  is  a  living  in  the  object  and  through  the  object.  Religion  is 
thus  essentially  a  way  of  life.  It  is  practical  through  and 
through.     An  inactive  religion  is  an   impossibility  and  sham. 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  89 

It  does  not  exist  at  all  until  it  is,  as  we  say,  "applied."     It  is 
energy,  spiritual  energy,  for  which  to  exist  at  all  is  to  be  active. 

A  man's  religion  on  this  view  is  that  man's  way  of  living. 
It  is  the  object  aimed  at  more  or  less  consistently  amidst  the 
endless  variety  of  life's  detailed  interests.  It  is  what  ultimately 
decides  his  method  of  handling  his  circumstances.  It  deter- 
mines the  result  which  he  wishes  to  extract  from  his  dealing 
with  the  world  and  his  fellow-men.  It  occupies  his  thoughts — 
when  they  are  free — awakes  and  sways  and  satisfies  his  emo- 
tions, informs  and  inspires  his  will,  and  produces  or  incarnates 
itself  in  his  character.    A  man's  religion  is  his  most  real  self. 

We  have  said  that  all  human  life  is  practical,  even  that  which 
we  call  theoretical.  It  is  always  purposive,  always  aims  at 
ends  conceived  as  good.  All  the  objects  for  which  man  strives 
are  regarded  by  him  as  kinds  of  good — the  truth  which  the 
theorist  seeks,  the  beauty  which  the  artist  would  produce,  the 
material  wealth  which  the  economic  man  would  make  or  gain. 
And  it  follows,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  that  any  one  of  such  objects, 
if  it  is  the  dominant  object  of  desire,  may  be  a  man's  God, 
and  that  the  pursuit  of  it  is  his  religion.  The  moment  an  object 
becomes  the  source  and  standard  of  all  values  for  him,  and  is 
nearer  and  dearer  to  him  than  his  separate  self,  so  that  life 
without  it  is  just  failure,  it  becomes  his  religion. 

Two  characteristics  of  religion  thus  become  plain.  In  the 
first  place,  as  I  have  already  tried  to  insist,  it  is  the  pursuit 
not  merely  of  a  good,  but  of  the  Supreme  Good,  the  Best,  the 
Perfect  (as  I  believe),  and  to  that  alone  we  give  the  name 
"God."  In  the  second  place,  it  is  the  loss,  or  at  least  the  total 
immersion  of  the  self,  in  this  pursuit.  It  is  not  merely  a  way 
of  life,  but  it  is  the  active  principle,  the  life  itself.  It  is  that 
which  breaks  out  into  behaviour.  It  follows  from  the  first  of 
these  two  characteristics  of  religion  that  incomplete  forms  of 
good  are  only  conditionally  good;  and  that  they  must  receive 
their  highest  value  from  that  which  endows  all  things  with 
worth.  Hence  truth,  beauty,  happiness  (I  am  not  sure  but 
that  I  can  say  "moral  goodness"),  are  but  elements  within  the 
Best;  and  they  attain  their  highest  only  when  the  spirit  of 


90  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

religion  expresses  itself  through  them.  I  go  not  mean  that  the 
theme  of  even,-  poem,  or  the  object  of  even,^  artist,  should  be  a 
religious  one;  but  I  do  mean  that  he  is  not  at  his  best  unless 
he  can  stand  by  his  poem,  or  his  picture,  or  his  business,  and 
saj-  "This  is  the  best  way  in  my  power  of  serving  the  Best." 
And  from  this  point  of  view  ven-  humble  lives,  and  ven'  simple 
acts,  attain  a  mar\  ellous  dignit}  and  beauty.  "I  have  served 
the  most  High,  for  I  have  wiped  the  tears  of  the  sorrowing." 
The  divine  life  can  throb  in  very  humble  hearts. 

Religion  is  thus  not  only  practical  in  its  essence,  it  is  practice; 
it  is  experience,  it  is  life.  But  that  is  as  much  as  to  say  that 
whatever  more  it  may  or  may  not  be,  religion  must  be  moral; 
for  morality  is  man's  habitual  way  of  evaluating  objects  and  of 
seeking  them.  The  relation  of  religion  to  the  moral  ideal  is 
more  direct  and  perhaps  more  intimate  than  to  the  intellectual 
or  aesthetic  ideal.  "A  man  who  is  'religious'  and  does  not  act 
morally,  is  an  impostor."  says  ]\Ir.  Bradley,  "or  his  religion  is 
a  false  one.  This  does  not  hold  good  elsewhere.  A  philosopher 
may  be  a  good  philosopher,  and  yet,  taking  him  as  a  whole, 
may  be  immoral ;  and  the  same  thing  is  true  of  an  artist,  or 
even  of  a  theologian.  They  may  all  be  good,  and  yet  not  good 
men :  but  no  one  who  knows  what  true  religion  is,  would  call 
a  man  who  on  the  whole  was  immoral,  a  religious  man.  For 
religion  is  not  the  mere  knowing  or  contemplating  of  any 
object,  however  high.  It  is  not  mere  philosophy  nor  art,  be- 
cause it  is  not  mere  seeing,  no  mere  theoretic  activit}".  .  .  . 
Religion  is  essentially  a  doing,  and  a  doing  which  is  moral.  It 
implies  a  realizing,  and  a  realizing  of  the  good  self."  ' 

Does  the  converse  also  hold  good  ?  '  Are  we  to  say  then 
that  morality  is  religion?  ]Most  certainly  not,"  continues  Mr. 
Bradley,  and,  so  far  as  I  know,  everyone  will  agree  with  him. 
If,  on  the  one  hand,  all  men  are  agreed  that  religion  and  moral- 
it}"  cannot  be  separated :  neither,  on  the  other  hand,  can  they 
be  simply  identified.  What,  then,  is  the  relation  between 
them?  This  is  a  question  of  cardinal  importance  which  we 
must  consider  with  some  care. 

»Bradley's  Ethical  StudUs,  pp.  280-1. 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  91 

If  we  turn  to  the  history  of  either  religion  or  morality,  we 
shall  see  without  much  difficulty  that  no  simple  or  single  defini- 
tion of  their  relation  will  hold.  Though  (as  I  believe  to  be 
the  case)  there  exists  a  relation  which  is  fundamental  and  con- 
stitutive of  both,  its  manifestations  of  itself  have  diiEfered  at 
different  stages  of  man's  development — like  all  other  human 
relations,  industrial,  moral  or  political.  Interested  primarily  as 
I  am,  not  in  the  history  of  past  religions,  but  in  the  religious 
consciousness  as  an  existing  fact  to-day,  I  shall  only  refer  very 
briefly  to  the  various  ways  in  which  religion  and  morality  have 
been  inter-related  in  earlier  forms  of  civilization. 

At  the  lower  levels  of  human  life  it  is  not  easy  to  discern  the 
presence  of  either  morality  or  religion.  Not  only  is  there  no 
distinction  between  the  secular  and  the  sacred  or  between  the 
natural  and  spiritual — distinctions  still  blurred  even  in  our  own 
day,  and  shifting  and  unreliable — but  no  constant  Best  has 
emerged  as  an  object  to  be  either  realized  or  reverenced.  There 
is  nothing  but  a  changing  and  momentary  "Better."  For  life 
itself  has,  at  this  stage,  little  effective  continuity.  In  the  cruder 
forms  of  religion  desires,  aims,  have  hardly  to  supplant  each 
other;  each  of  them  is  in  itself  so  evanescent  and  so  much  at 
the  beck  of  outward  circumstance.  Passions  rule,  but  there  is 
no  ruling  passion,  far  less  is  there  a  purposed  future  that  con- 
trols the  present,  or  a  past  that  is  reflected  upon  and  its  mean- 
ing preserved.  Such  continuity  as  there  is,  is  subconscious,  as 
we  say,  and  relatively  inefiEective.  And  religion  shows  the  same 
characters.  It  is  a  sentiment  rather  than  a  ruling  purpose,  and 
it  lacks  all  constancy.  At  this  stage  there  are  many  gods,  and 
each  passes  out  in  turn  and  is  forgotten  as  if  he  had  never  been. 
Religion  is  not  even  polytheistic  as  yet.  Polytheism  comes  only 
when  the  pious  savage  recalls  and  reflects  on  the  succession  of 
his  deities.  At  the  earlier  stage  when  the  worshipper  sought 
the  help  or  tried  to  avert  the  wrath  of  his  god,  that  god  was  all 
in  all  to  him  for  the  moment.  Each  god  in  turn  was  the  only 
god.  In  some  sense  and  for  the  moment  he  was  the  Best.  But 
that  Best  may  have  no  qualities  that  we  would  call  moral.  He 
may  be  simply  the  strongest,  or  even  the  most  cruel.     Man,  it 


92  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

may  be  said,  creates  his  gods  as  his  wants  dictate;  and  the  things 
he  wants  most  are  often  very  strange.  There  is  but  one  ten- 
dency at  war  with  these  measureless  aberrations;  it  is  man's 
tendency  to  turn  to  that  which  seems  to  have  supreme  value  as 
supplying  his  wants.  Let  him  but  understand  his  true  wants, 
learn  the  needs  of  his  soul,  and  he  will  find  that  only  a  God 
who  has  spiriual  attributes  can  satisfy  him. 

Emergence  out  of  the  stage  at  which  there  is  no  constant 
loyalty  to  any  cause,  no  recognized  law,  natural,  moral,  or 
religious,  but  only  a  succession  of  moods  and  passions,  hungry 
hunts  and  days  of  gorging,  and  little  foresight,  or  restraint  of 
the  present  for  the  sake  of  the  future;  when  there  are  few 
peaceful  human  relations,  domestic  or  other,  and  society,  our 
greatest  leader  out  of  ourselves  and  into  communion  with 
others,  makes  but  few  and  meagre  calls — emergence  out  of  this 
stage  is  very  slow.  Change  probably  comes  under  the  pressure 
of  some  overwhelming  danger.  To  meet  it,  closer  connections 
between  individuals  and  between  tribes  are  needed,  and  greater 
fidelity  to  their  undertakings  becomes  customary.  The  social 
spirit  of  mutual  regard  and  service  is  fostered;  life,  individual 
and  social,  gains  depth  and  its  purposes  acquire  constancy.  The 
dim  conception  of  a  fixed  law  of  right  behaviour,  and  of  some 
good  that  is  supreme,  appears  and  gradually  assumes  the  control 
of  conduct. 

Religion  and  morality  are  present,  and,  in  some  way,  active 
even  in  the  lowest  forms  of  human  life.  Man  is  never  without 
a  religion  of  some  kind.  Man's  impulse  to  live,  which  he 
shares  with  other  animals,  and  which  is  a  constituent  of  his 
nature,  takes  the  form  of  believing  in  and  seeking  a  best,  or 
of  that  which  approves  itself  as  the  best  for  the  time  being  to 
such  an  understanding  of  his  needs  as  he  possesses.  But  if 
religion  and  morality  are  constitutive  elements  of  man's  very 
being;  if  they  are  developed  forms  of  original  impulses  arising 
from  the  dominant  need  to  live;  if  at  bottom  they  are  necessities 
like  the  necessity  of  physical  sustenance,  then  irreligion  and 
immorality  are  violations  of  the  self,  forms  of  self-mutilation. 
On  the  other  hand,  both  morality  and  religion  have,  in  man's 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  93 

history,  illustrated  by  their  strange  and  often  repellent  forms 
the  complexity  of  his  being,  and  the  difficulty  of  attaining  the 
knowledge  best  worth  having,  namely,  knowledge  of  the  self, 
of  its  true  needs,  and  of  that  by  which  they  can  be  fulfilled. 

But  intimate  as  the  relations  of  religion  and  morality  are, 
they  cannot  be  directly  identified,  as  I  shall  try  to  show  in  the 
next  lecture. 


LECTURE  VIII 

MORALITY  AND  RELIGION 
(a)     THEIR  ANTAGONISM 

We  must  now  take  up  one  of  the  most  difficult  and  important 
of  our  problems,  namely,  the  inter-relation  of  morality  and 
religion.  And  first,  as  to  some  things  which  are  obvious. 
Morality  is  plainly  concerned  in  the  ordinary  affairs  of  every- 
day life.  It  is  in  a  sense  the  whole  of  life.  At  every  turn 
there  is  some  more  or  less  urgent  want;  there  is  something  to 
be  done;  some  call  to  be  obeyed,  or  disobeyed  or  neglected. 
Approval  or  disapproval  follows.  We  pass  a  moral  judgment 
upon  the  deed  and  call  it  good  or  bad.  In  doing  so  we  recog- 
nize that  a  universal  law  has  been  sustained  or  broken.  A 
moral  law  has  been  either  respected  or  violated.  The  agent 
has  acted  either  consistently  or  inconsistently  with  a  moral 
world,  which  is  at  once  eternal  in  its  laws  and  a-building  by 
means  of  the  deeds  of  man. 

Moreover,  the  things  to  be  done,  duties,  as  they  come  to  be 
called,  are  always  inalienable.  Mine  is  mine,  and  yours  is 
yours,  and  theirs  is  theirs.  There  is  a  certain  individuality,  a 
personal  privacy,  and  apartness,  and  single-handedness  about 
duties.  The  will  to  act  and  the  resulting  deed,  whether  right 
or  wrong,  are  the  individual's  own,  however  much  he  may  co- 
operate with  others  in  the  doing  of  them,  however  closely  his 
environment  may  press  upon  him,  and  however  deeply  the  social 
life  into  which  he  was  born  has  penetrated  into  him  and  be- 
come the  sustenance  and  tissue  of  his  soul.  His  acts  are  not 
only  his  own,  but  exclusively  his  own;  for  no  influence  has 

94 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  95 

entered  into  him  without  thereby  becoming  an  element  in  his 
individuality. 

But  religion,  not  less  obviously,  seems  to  break  down  the 
barriers  of  individuality.  The  primary  interest  of  the  religious 
man  lies  in  Some  good.  He  lives  for  it,  as  we  have  seen;  and 
the  supreme  value  of  the  object  of  his  devotion,  or  his  God, 
lifts  the  exercise  of  religious  functions  above  the  level  of  what 
is  secular  or  even  merely  moral.  It  does  so  even  when  it 
penetrates  what  would  otherwise  be  commonplace.  The  spirit 
of  religion  may,  and  often  does,  attend  a  mother  on  the  hearth, 
as  she  moves  among  the  bairns,  radiating  love's  services  all  day 
long. 

Nevertheless,  on  that  same  hearth,  at  the  beginning  and  close 
of  the  day,  there  are  definite  religious  rites.  There  is  family 
worship,  and  an  hour  that  is  sacred.  Then  the  soul  ascends  for 
a  moment  out  of  the  reach  of  ordinary  cares,  and  its  eyes  look 
away  to  where  the  horizon  of  the  present  life  dips  out  of  sight. 
Primitive  religions  naturally  become  ceremonious.  Primitive 
communities  naturally  gather  together  for  praise  and  prayer 
and  sacrifice:  and  the  rites  on  the  great  religious  occasions  are 
accompanied  by  all  the  circumstances  that  can  make  them  im- 
pressive. They  are  conducted  by  men  gifted  with  the  powers 
that  impress,  dedicated  men,  who  are  held  to  be  in  mystical 
communion  with  unseen  powers.  A  priesthood  grows,  and  re- 
ligion becomes  a  thing  apart — sacred — not  to  be  touched  by 
ordinary  hands  or  approached  in  ordinary  moods.  Awe,  which 
is  a  feeling  that  fluctuates  between  fear  and  reverence,  is  the 
primitive  worshipper's  mood ;  and  the  strangeness  of  something 
that  lies  beyond — beyond  all  things  that  can  be  seen  or  heard, 
beyond  the  utmost  limits  of  even  possible  knowledge — is  the 
most  insistent  characteristic  of  his  God.  In  short,  Herbert 
Spencer's  conception  of  religion  as  awe  of  the  unknown  de- 
scribes not  inaccurately  the  primitive  man's  blind  groping  for 
the  Best. 

Thus,  while  the  lives  of  men  gain  to  some  degree  that  con- 
sistency which  results  from  more  constant  conceptions  of  what 
has  worth  and  should  be  first  sought,  religion  and  morality 


96  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

come  to  occupy  different  territories.  Religion  henceforth  will 
have  nothing  to  do  with  the  ordinary  ways  of  life:  these  are 
all  "secular."  And  morality  does  not  concern  itself  with  re- 
ligion, which  is  sacred  and  aloof,  and  a  matter  of  rites  and 
ceremonies.  This  separateness  of  their  interests  permits  for  a 
time  a  relation  of  mutual  indifference  between  them.  Each 
goes  its  own  way.  The  moral  man  need  not  be  religious,  except 
now  and  then,  on  sacred  days;  nor  does  the  religious  man,  at 
this  stage,  need  to  be  moral.  He  may  even  have  a  "morality" 
of  his  own,  and  the  atrocities  of  the  crude  priesthood  may  be 
but  symbols  of  its  sacredness. 

Such  indifference,  however,  cannot  last.  All  things  that 
grow,  human  life  amongst  them,  must  maintain  their  unity  as 
well  as  branch  into  differences.  Man  must  be  consistent  with 
himself,  if  he  is  to  escape  war  against  himself.  Hence,  as  man- 
kind develops,  both  religion  and  morality  claim,  more  and  more 
completely,  to  have  dominion  over  the  whole  of  life.  As  the 
moral  consciousness  gathers  strength,  the  ill  deeds  done  in  the 
name  of  religion,  its  barbarous  and  cruel  rites  and  sacrifices, 
lose  their  sacred  lustre.  They  are  condemned.  Even  the  gods, 
when  a  Plato  arrives,  must  respect  the  moral  laws. 

On  the  other  hand,  religion  also  widens  its  domain,  claims 
more  and  more  authority  over  the  minutiae  of  daily  life.  If 
it  is  external  and  formal,  as  at  this  stage  it  generally  is,  then  it 
sees  more  and  more  to  the  mint  and  annis  and  cummin,  and 
insists  on  abstention  from  common  things.  "It  garr'd  Cuddie 
Headrigg  to  refuse  to  eat  the  plum  porridge  at  Yule-tide  Eve." 
And,  naturally,  poor  Cuddie  could  not  see  how  it  was  "ony 
matter  for  God  or  man,  whether  a  ploughman  had  supp'd  on 
minched  pies  or  sowens." 

Morality  at  this  stage  is  ousted  into  an  inferior  position  as 
compared  with  religion.  It  has  little  spiritual  and  no  lasting 
value.  Indeed,  it  is  despised  as  having  less  than  none;  for  it 
comes  to  be  regarded  as  purely  mundane,  and  all  mundane 
things,  all  that  are  natural,  are  held  to  be  the  enemy  of  that 
which  is  spiritual.  The  ordinary  occupations  which  man  fol- 
lows in  order  to  supply  his  physical  wants  are  tolerated  in  the 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  97 

laity;  but  those  who  have  given  themselves  completely  to  God 
must  reduce  their  physical  needs  to  the  low^est  limits,  renounce 
the  world,  engage  neither  in  industry  nor  in  commerce,  nor 
follow  the  arts  either  of  peace  or  war.  They  are  pilgrims  on 
their  way  home  through  a  barren  wilderness.  Everything  per- 
taining to  the  world  and  the  flesh  is  corrupt.  Even  the  domes- 
tic ties  and  the  other  social  relations,  which  in  truth  furnish  the 
opportunities  of  the  good  life  and  are  the  nurseries  of  all  the 
virtues,  lie  outside  of  the  limits  of  the  sacred  life.  In  short, 
the  world  and  the  flesh  are  ranked  with  the  devil. 

The  slightest  acquaintance  with  the  history  of  the  Christian 
Church  makes  this  antagonism  familiar,  and  the  echoes  of  it 
still  survive  in  the  memory  of  many  of  us.  On  the  whole,  at 
present,  morality  is  strengthening  its  claims;  sometimes  at  the 
expense  of  religion.  It  is  so  far  recognized  as  vital  to  religion 
that  we  will  not  call  an  immoral  man  religious,  though  per- 
haps we  would  allow  more  lapses  to  the  religious  devotee  than 
a  moral  rigor ist  could  approve  in  himself.  On  the  other  hand, 
religion  is  not  now  deemed  necessary  to  the  moral  life.  Many 
men,  like  Matthew  Arnold,  consider  that  religion  can  only  add 
to  morality  a  certain  emotional  intensity,  whose  value  is 
doubtful. 

Sometimes  even  the  moral  attitude  is  held  to  be  the  nobler 
of  the  two.  It  means  that  a  man  faces  his  own  duty  frankly 
in  his  own  strength,  and  trusts  to  its  intrinsic  value.  Conse- 
quences do  not  count  where  what  is  right  is  done  for  its  own 
sole  sake.  The  steadfast  moral  universe  is  felt  by  the  good 
man  to  be  at  his  back,  so  long  as  he  is  in  his  duty.  He  stands 
for  the  Empire  of  the  Good,  as  the  lonely  soldier  on  the  night- 
watch  stands  for  his  country.  He  has  a  right  to  its  support: 
and  its  support  is  certain.  An  attitude  which  appreciates  the 
unconditional  authority  and  sufficiency  of  morality  has  the 
further  advantage  that  it  seems  to  relieve  us  from  the  difficult 
and  possibly  insoluble  problems  of  religion.  We  need  not  ask, 
except  as  a  matter  of  speculative  curiosity,  whether  God  exists 
or  not;  whether  it  is  his  love  or  his  power  that  is  defective,  or 
whether  the  evil  and  pain  and  disorder  of  this  tragic  world 


98  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

of  ours  are  but  appearances.  Nor,  lastly,  are  we  committed  to 
the  task  of  finding  some  way  of  reconciling  the  reality  of  these 
evils  with  the  reality  of  an  unlimited  love  clothed  with  infinite 
power,  which  is  the  Christian's  God.  Our  part,  as  moral 
beings,  remains  the  same.  We  strive  to  do  what  is  right  what- 
ever solution  is  refused  or  offered,  and  we  put  our  trust  in  it. 

Nobody  can  deny  the  dignity  and  strength  of  this  Stoic  atti- 
tude. On  the  other  hand,  the  value  of  a  religion  which  is  real, 
of  a  genuine  devotion  to  the  Perfect,  the  Spiritually  Perfect, 
remains  unimpaired  and  unquestionable.  "If  we  are  honest 
with  ourselves"  (says  Mr.  T.  H.  Green  in  his  great  sermon  on 
"Faith")  "we  shall  admit  that  something  best  called  faith,  a 
prevailing  conviction  of  our  presence  to  God  and  his  to  us, 
of  his  gracious  mind  towards  us,  working  in  and  with  and 
through  us,  of  our  duty  to  our  fellow-men  as  our  brethren  in 
him,  has  been  the  source  of  whatever  has  been  best  in  us  and 
in  our  deeds.  If  we  have  enough  experience  and  sympathy  to 
interpret  fairly  the  life  of  the  world  around  us,  we  shall  admit 
that  faith  of  this  sort  is  the  salt  of  the  earth.  Through  it, 
below  the  surface  of  circumstance  and  custom,  humanity  is 
being  renewed  day  by  day,  and  unless  our  heart  is  sealed  by 
selfishness  and  sophistry,  though  we  may  not  consciously  share 
in  the  process,  there  will  be  men  and  times  that  make  us  rev- 
erentially feel  its  reality.  Who  can  hear  an  unargumentative 
and  unrhetorical  Christian  minister  appeal  to  his  people  to 
cleanse  their  hearts  and  to  help  each  other  as  sons  of  God  in 
Christ,  without  feeling  that  he  touches  the  deepest  and  strong- 
est spring  of  noble  conduct  in  mankind?"^ 

Is  it  quite  certain  that  the  splendid  ethical  recklessness  which 
stands  by  its  own  deeds,  accepting  the  condemnation  of  the 
eternal  moral  laws  if  the  actions  are  wrong  and,  if  they  are 
right,  finding  ample  reward  in  the  mere  doing  of  them — is  it 
quite  certain  that  this  proud  Stoicism  is  not  itself  a  true  re- 
ligion? Or  does  not  religion  demand,  as  its  first  condition, 
humility,  self-distrust,  self-condemnation  and  utter  rejection  of 
all  claims  to  merit,  and  a  yielding  up  of  the  very  soul  to  him 

»The  Works  of  T.  H.   Green,  vol.  iii.   pp.  258-9. 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  99 

who  can  forgive  and  cleanse  and  heal?  What  is  the  relation 
between  morality  and  religion?  Do  they,  at  their  best,  pass 
into  each  other;  or,  as  we  have  hinted,  is  there  a  dijfference 
between  them  that,  while  leaving  them  both  necessary  to  man, 
still  holds  them  apart,  complementary  perhaps  in  practice  but, 
like  other  things  necessary  to  man,  not  reducible  to  sameness, 
nor  reconcilable  by  any  logic  that  would  bring  such  a  monoto- 
nous consummation? 

Before  raising  the  next  question,  it  may  be  well  to  simiman- 
ize  the  results  we  have  so  far  reached  in  regard  to  the  relation 
of  morality  and  religion. 

We  saw  that  at  the  lowest  stages  of  man's  life  the  conception 
of  a  binding  and  universal  rule  of  conduct  had  not  emerged. 
Not  only  was  there  no  acknowledged  rule  of  life,  or  moral  law, 
there  were  no  consistent  ways  of  behaviour.  Man,  like  other 
animals,  merely  sought  to  supply  his  own  physical  wants,  and 
of  these,  usually,  only  the  most  urgent  and  imperative.  The 
dictators  of  his  conduct  were  hunger  and  thirst  and  the  sexual 
impulses.  He  was  marked,  amongst  other  animals,  mainly  by 
the  extent  of  his  greed,  as  a  creature  of  wilder  passions  and  of 
more  incalculable  capriciousness.  His  religious  history  showed 
the  same  features  as  his  ordinary  or  secular  conduct.  So  little 
continuity  was  there  in  his  experience,  and  personality,  that 
even  polytheism  had  not  been  attained.  Each  God  ruled  for 
a  moment,  and  then  passed  away  and  was  forgotten. 

But  there  was  an  operative  law  beneath  all  this  chaos  of 
particularism.  It  led  man,  from  moment  to  moment,  to  seek 
the  Best  he  knew,  even  as  it  makes  the  preservation  of  life  the 
paramount  and  persistent  end  of  the  animal.  At  length  man 
became  more  or  less  aware  of  this  law.  He  tried  to  apprehend 
and  to  define  this  Best.  He  sought  it  with  a  certain  per- 
sistency. It  became  the  ideal  of  his  practical  life,  and  also 
something  nobler  than  his  ordinary  purposes  and  interests,  a 
supreme  mystical  reality.  Thus  morality  and  religion  emerged 
from  the  chaos  of  fitful  caprice,  and  man's  interests  fell  into 
two  quite  definite  and  mutually  exclusive  domains.  One  was 
secular,  and  in  it  the  demands  and  conditions  of  morality  were 


100  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

supreme;  the  other  was  sacred,  and  within  it  religion  tolerated 
no  rivalry  or  intrusion.  With  the  growth  of  civilization,  and 
the  consequent  enrichment  of  man's  spiritual  inheritance,  the 
demands  of  both  morality  and  religion  were  enlarged,  and  their 
rights  became  more  and  more  sovereign  in  character.  The 
opposition  between  them  necessarily  deepened,  and  it  became 
ever  more  difficult  at  once  to  grant  their  demands  and  rights 
in  all  their  fulness  and  also  to  reconcile  them. 

At  present  there  is  confusion  on  every  side  as  to  the  relation 
of  morality  and  religion;  and  the  confusion  of  the  ordinary 
moral  and  religious  spirit  of  our  time  is  amply  echoed  by  our 
philosophers.  We  come  up  against  it  on  every  hand:  some- 
times in  one  guise,  sometimes  in  another.  Idealism,  that  is  the 
Idealism  which  is  frank  and  fearless,  and  would  fain  be  a 
Realism  if  it  can,  alone  tries  to  accord  to  both  religion  and 
morality  their  full  rights;  but  the  result  is  a  constant  oscilla- 
tion from  the  primacy  of  one  to  that  of  the  other.  At  one 
moment  the  Absolute  is  not  the  God  of  religion,  and  the  God 
of  religion  is  not  absolute.  Yet  the  Absolute  alone,  it  is  as- 
serted, is  ultimately  and  unconditionally  real ;  and  it  lends  to  all 
finite  things  such  dubious  existence  as  they  have ;  for  it  contains 
them,  though  transfigured  in  such  a  way  that  they  cannot  be 
called  either  true,  or  good,  or  beautiful.  Truth,  beauty  and 
goodness  vanish  in  the  Absolute,  to  reappear  on  occasion  some- 
thing after  the  manner  of  the  Cheshire  cat.  Except  as  in  the 
Absolute,  and  therefore  transmuted,  finite  things  are  not  real, 
and  being  transmuted  in  the  Absolute  they  become  unrecog- 
nizable. On  the  other  hand,  the  finite  objects  that  we  do  know 
are  just  appearances — real  appearances,  but  only  appearances. 
The  Absolute  is  not  itself  quite  unknowable.  We  find  that  it 
is  static,  cannot  change,  swallows  and  transmutes  finite  things. 
But  we  know  nothing  specially  to  its  credit,  since  truth,  good- 
ness, beauty  disappear  in  it.  And  its  very  reality  is  of  a  dubi- 
ous kind :  for  it  contains,  so  far  as  we  know,  nothing  but  trans- 
muted appearances.  All  it  can  "take  up,"  "include,"  "sublate," 
"transform,"  are  phenomena,  finite  appearances,  and  the  kind 
of  reality  which  they  possess  is  very  obscure  at  best. 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  101 

From  these  difficulties  which  beset  the  reflection  of  the  teach- 
ers to  whom  I  owe  most  I  have  learnt  one  thing  clearly,  namely, 
that  we  can  deny,  or  do  without,  neither  the  finite  nor  the  in- 
finite, and  above  all,  that  we  cannot  separate  them.  From  the 
merely  negative  criticisms  that  have  been  advanced,  and  from 
the  one-sided  theories  which,  as  a  rule,  have  betrayed  the  in- 
terests of  religion  and  shown  no  need  of  any  Absolute,  or  of 
any  unity  within  the  differences  of  finite  things,  I  am  afraid  I 
have  learnt  less.  And  as  to  the  forms  of  Idealism  which  are 
still  tainted  with  Berkeleian  subjectivity,  they  seem  to  me  to  be 
quite  barren.  It  is  only  in  such  doctrines  as  those  of  Mr. 
Bradley  and  Mr.  Bosanquet  that  a  genuine  recognition  of  the 
apparently  inconsistent  rights  of  the  finite  and  the  infinite,  and, 
as  a  consequence,  of  morality  and  religion,  makes  itself  felt. 
And  it  is  a  great  step  towards  the  solution  of  a  difficulty  to 
lay  it  quite  bare.  Nevertheless,  the  solution  has  not  been 
found.  It  is  only  suggested  in  the  vacillation  from  side  to  side. 
The  principle  on  which  an  uncompromising,  realistic  Idealism 
rests  has  still  to  be  justified.  The  dualism  of  nature  and  spirit 
has  not  been  overcome,  nor  that  of  the  secular  and  sacred,  nor 
indeed  of  the  finite  and  infinite  in  any  form.  But  it  has  be- 
come suspect.  A  sense  of  the  continuity  of  what  is  real  is 
abroad ;  and  that  continuity  is  no  longer  merely  materialistic  or 
physical.  The  affirmation  of  gaps  between  the  physical  and 
biological  and  the  conscious,  or  between  the  conscious  and  the 
self-conscious,  is  less  confident,  even  while  we  confess  our  in- 
ability to  overleap  these  gaps.  Nature  is  one,  we  say,  and 
man  is  merely  her  child.  We  do  not  hesitate  to  trace  his 
history  backwards  and  downwards  a  long  way.  But,  so  far, 
it  has  not  been  shown  that  nature  produces  him  as  consequently 
as  she  produces  apple  trees,  and  by  means  of  him,  in  the  same 
consequent  fashion,  builds  up  the  marvels  of  the  social  and 
spiritual  world.  The  affirmation  of  continuity  between  nature 
and  spirit  is  hesitating.'^  All  the  same,  if  we  cannot  say  that 
the  conviction  is  growing,  we  can  say  that  the  hypothesis  is 
becoming  more  and  more  probable,  that  some  principle  of  unity 

^See  my  Inaugural  Lecture,  in  Glasgow,  November,   1894. 


102  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

not  merely  underlies  but  so  acts  and  functions,  as  to  express 
itself  in  all  things,  and,  as  I  have  said,  we  are  not  any  longer 
tempted  to  offer  a  materialistic  account  of  that  principle.  I 
believe  we  are  on  the  way  to  an  Idealism  which  is  at  the  same 
time  a  Spiritual  Realism,  and  which,  with  the  aid  of  the 
sciences,  shall  demonstrate  the  working  in  all  things  of  a  prin- 
ciple which  operates  as  a  natural  force  at  a  certain  level,  and 
reveals  its  fuller  character  in  the  spiritual  enterprises  of  man- 
kind. The  "Stern  Law-giver"  for  Wordworth  wore  "The 
Godhead's  most  benignant  grace"  as  well  as  "preserved  the 
stars  from  wrong."  "The  awful  power"  could  be  called  upon 
to  perform  "humble  functions."  The  conception  is  familiar 
to  the  religious  consciousness  at  its  best:  it  is,  I  believe,  the 
destiny  of  a  sound  Idealism  and  of  science  to  make  it  good. 

Meantime,  somehow  or  other,  it  has  to  be  shown  that  all 
our  halting  dualisms,  even  that  of  nature  and  spirit  or  of  mat- 
ter and  mind,  rend  asunder  the  seamless  garment  of  the  real. 
That,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  no  one  ever  has  known,  and  that 
no  one  ever  can  know,  nature  and  spirit  except  as  elements  of 
a  unity  is  a  significant  but  neglected  truth.  Spirit  functions  as 
an  active  principle  functions;  and  spirit,  like  everything  else, 
is  what  it  does.  It  is  revealed  in  the  natural  cosmos,  and  re- 
vealed and  realized  more  fully  in  the  moral  and  religious  life. 
Nature  and  spirit  imply  each  other,  as  subject  and  object;  they 
exist  in  virtue  of  each  other,  and  neither  their  difference  nor 
their  unity  can  be  compromised.  The  world  which  we  think 
existed  before  man  or  mind,  was  a  world,  in  its  make  and  struc- 
ture, relative  to  mind.  It  became  a  known  world  as  soon  as 
mind  appeared  and  performed  its  part.  Spirit  is  not  except  as 
an  active  principle:  nature  is  not  except  as  its  expression. 
The  Absolute  is  not  static,  and  the  Universe  is  not  dead. 
Such  is  "the  faith"  of  a  realistic  Idealism. 


LECTURE  IX 

MORALITY  AND  RELIGION 
{b)    THEIR  RECONCILIATION 

We  now  return  to  our  immediate  problem — namely,  that  of  the 
inter-relation  of  morality  and  religion.  At  present,  especially 
in  our  theoretical  reflections,  the  opposition  of  the  two  is  much 
in  evidence.  In  our  practical  life,  unless  I  am  unjust  to  my 
neighbours,  their  antagonism  is  not  so  pronounced,  and  its 
solution  is  not  felt  to  be  so  urgent.  Nevertheless  the  "re- 
ligious" man  is  all  too  apt  to  confine  his  religion  to  the  Sab- 
bath day  and  its  observances;  and  he  is  not  usually  expected 
to  be  more  generous  to  his  employees,  or  more  genial  on  his 
hearth,  or  more  honest  in  his  business,  than  others.  And  on 
the  other  hand,  the  pre-eminently  practical  or  "moral"  man 
often  fails  to  discern  the  need  or  the  uses  of  religion.  Re- 
ligion and  morality  grow,  like  rather  sickly  plants,  side  by  side, 
giving  one  another  no  help. 

The  first  of  the  theoretic  difficulties  of  reconciling  morality 
with  religion  arises  from  the  responsibility  of  the  moral  agent 
for  all  those  of  his  actions  which  we  would  call  morally  right 
or  wrong.  His  responsibility,  in  turn,  seems  to  imply  his  free- 
dom of  choice;  his  act  is  traceable  to  his  personality,  issues 
thence,  and  thence  only,  whatever  the  palliating  or  contribu- 
tory forces  may  have  been.  He  must  be  the  unambiguous 
author  of  the  deed.  In  estimating  his  merit  or  guilt  we  no 
doubt  take  into  consideration  his  history,  his  temperament,  his 
character  and  his  circumstances.  But  his  responsibility,  be  it 
great  or  small,  remains.  He  is  still  considered  to  have  con- 
ceived and  willed  the  act,  and  to  have  done  these  things  of 

lOS 


104  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

himself  and  by  himself.  The  language  of  the  repentant  moral 
consciousness  always  is,  "I  alone  did  it."  It  never  seeks  to 
share  the  guilt  with  others,  nor  to  attribute  its  deed  to  circum- 
stances. It  takes  them  wholly  upon  itself.  In  short,  moral 
responsibility  seems  to  imply  a  kind  of  isolation.  A  man's 
neighbours,  his  world,  can  only  look  on.  The  father  or  mother, 
teacher  or  friend,  may  urge  and  tempt  and  threaten  the  boy, 
using  every  art  of  persuasion;  but  in  the  end  they  must  be 
content  to  await  the  issue.  The  teacher  may  explain,  illustrate 
and  exemplify,  but  he  cannot  Ttiake  the  child  see.  The  act  of 
apprehending  and  comprehending  must  be  the  child's  own. 
And  the  same  truth  holds  of  our  volitions  and  actions.  They 
also  are  in  the  end,  whether  good  or  bad,  our  own.  They  are 
the  results  of  our  choice :  they  issue  from  our  personality,  and 
they  express  its  freedom  and  character. 

I  am  not  ignorant  of  the  fact  that  great  writers,  in  both 
ancient  and  modern  times,  have  maintained  that  a  man's  deed 
may  be  approved  as  moral,  or  condemned  as  immoral,  although 
he  is  not  free.  The  consequence,  so  far  as  I  am  able  to  judge, 
is  the  denial  of  the  specifically  moral  features  of  the  actions, 
and,  indeed,  the  extrusion  of  morality  in  favour  of,  at  best,  a 
calculating  prudence.  Their  doctrine  deprives  morality  of  its 
unconditional  character,  and  therefore  destroys  it.  No  good  is 
sovereign;  no  duty  im.perative.  The  best  that  can  be  said  of 
anything  under  such  conditions  is  that  it  is  useful,  which  means 
that  it  derives  its  worth  from  something  else.  Utilitarianism 
cannot  even  be  a  hedonism  without  inconsistency,  for  it  cannot 
have  any  end  which  does  not  turn  into  means  in  its  hands. 
Nothing  justifies  itself  for  a  theory  of  utilit)\  The  theory 
admits  nothing  that  is  final  or  absolute ;  it  commits  the  agent 
to  the  pursuit  of  an  ever-receding  and  indefinite  end. 

A  non-moral  theory  of  mere  utilities  may  go  well  with  the 
denial  of  freedom.  But  the  denial  of  freedom  usually  arises 
from  another  cause  than  lack  of  interest  in  the  ethical  qualities 
of  man  and  his  actions.  Freedom  is  taken  to  imply  the  com- 
plete detachment  of  the  agent,  or  of  his  ^v^ll,  from  both  ante- 
cedents and  environment;  and  the  possibility  of  such  detach- 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  105 

ment  is  denied.  His  responsibility  is  taken  to  imply  that  the 
self,  or  the  will,  is  in  no  sense  continuous  with  the  world  in 
which  he  lives.  On  the  assumption  that  he  is  free,  he  must  be 
quite  separate  from  it.  He  must  exclude  it  absolutely.  There 
is  no  bridge  over  the  chasm  between  the  self,  or  the  willing 
part  of  the  self,  and  the  not-self.  The  problem  of  freedom 
is  held  to  be  the  problem  of  natural  cause,  and  causality  means 
the  transmutation  of  energy  from  one  form  to  another,  accord- 
ing to  fixed  quantitative  laws  which  physical  science  defines. 
No  other  kind  of  connection  is  conceived  in  this  controversy. 
Both  the  necessitarians  and  the  libertarians  assume  that,  if 
there  is  real  continuity  between  the  will  or  the  personality 
and  the  antecedents  or  environment,  freedom  is  impossible,  and 
both  alike  assume  that  any  continuity  must  take  the  form  of 
natural  cause.  Hence,  either  the  casual  connection  or  freedom 
must  be  rejected.  The  former  reject  the  idea  of  freedom;  the 
latter  the  idea  of  the  continuity  of  what  exists,  that  is,  of  the 
unity  of  the  principle  of  reality.  Mutual  out-sidedness  and 
exclusiveness  is  the  last  word  on  this  theory — even  as  regards 
the  relation  of  the  finite  and  infinite;  and,  as  we  shall  see, 
religion  ought  to  be  impossible  to  those  who  maintain  such  a 
doctrine. 

But  we  must  avoid  following  further  the  fortunes  of  the 
controversy  of  the  libertarians  and  necessitarians;  and,  with 
your  permission,  I  shall  merely  make  a  few  dogmatic  asser- 
tions— the  truth  of  which  you  can  easily  test  for  yourselves — 
and  pass  on.  In  the  first  place,  neither  of  these  schools  saves 
morality.  The  libertarian  makes  morality  impossible  by  sub- 
jecting man  to  the  worst  of  all  necessities,  namely,  that  of 
pure  chance,  for  the  self  is  absolutely  irresponsible,  or  the  will 
is  lawless.  There  is  no  law  within  or  without  that  can  be 
either  kept  or  broken  by  the  agent.  The  necessitarian  does  not, 
strictly  speaking,  pretend  to  save  morality.  The  actions  of 
man  are  for  him  purely  natural  events.  Here  we  have  law  but 
no  freedom,  that  is,  no  power  either  to  accept  or  to  reject  what 
is  proffered.  The  necessity  of  choice  cannot  arise  in  men 
any  more  than  in  gooseberry  bushes.    Each  bears  fruit  according 


106  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

to  its  kind  and  condition.  Thus  we  find  that  the  libertarian 
gives  freedom  without  law,  which  in  truth  is  caprice  and 
chance;  the  necessitarian  gives  us  law  and  denies  freedom. 
But  morality  requires  both.  Its  laws,  indeed,  are  unconditional, 
but  they  all  spring  from  "the  perfect  law  of  freedom." 

Hence  the  problem  of  morality  rightly  presented  differs  from 
that  of  both  of  these  schools.  Each  of  these  schools  bears 
witness  to  only  one-half  of  the  truth,  and  denies  the  other. 
But  the  moral  convictions  of  man,  the  moral  world,  as  we  say, 
can  be  established  only  on  the  basis  of  both  necessary  law  and 
freedom,  and  of  both  reconciled  within  the  moral  agent.  That 
is  to  say,  we  cannot  maintain  that  man,  or  man's  character  and 
actions,  have  any  moral  qualities,  are  either  right  or  wrong, 
unless  he  is  at  once  essentially  related  to  and  continuous  with 
the  world  and  subject  to  law,  and  also,  in  so  far  as  he  does 
right  or  wrong,  "free" — his  will  or  rather  his  personality  gen- 
uinely sovereign,  and  his  authorship  of  his  actions  unam- 
biguous. 

This  problem  takes  many  forms.  It  is  one  of  the  ways  in 
which  the  difficulty  appears  of  maintaining  and  reconciling 
differences  with  unity.  To  effect  that  reconciliation  means  a 
refusal  to  regard  independence  as  implying  isolation,  or  differ- 
ence as  equivalent  to  opposition,  or  to  admit  that  the  relation 
of  mutual  exclusion  is  ultimate,  or  that  mere  negation  can  be 
a  final  fact.  The  ultimate  relation,  even  between  opposites, 
must  be  positive. 

There  is  one  consideration  which  makes  it  much  easier  to 
maintain  than  to  reject  the  conviction  that  one  and  the  same 
principle  reveals  itself  in  all  things,  and  that  it  takes  the  whole 
of  the  differences,  as  related  in  one  system,  to  set  forth  the 
nature  of  that  principle.  To  come  to  the  particular  case  which 
we  are  considering,  there  is  one  fact  that  makes  it  difficult  to 
doubt  that  man  is  positively  related  as  a  part  of,  or  element 
in,  the  world  in  which  he  lives.  That  fact  is  the  utter  empti- 
ness, meaninglessness,  of  his  "self"  if  it  is  deprived  of  that 
which  it  has  borrowed  from  the  world,  whether  natural  or 
social;  and  its  helplessness  if  it  endeavours  to  do  anything — 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  107 

to  project  or  carry  out  any  purpose — except  with  its  concurrent 
help. 

Kant,  in  one  of  the  best-known  passages  of  all  his  works, 
makes  man  as  a  physical  being  a  part,  and  a  most  insignificant 
part,  of  a  vast  natural  system  that  extends  to  worlds  beyond 
worlds  and  times  beyond  times.  Man  borrows  from  it  the  mat- 
ter of  which  he  is  made,  and  after  a  short  time  must  give  it  back 
again.  But  Kant  lifts  man  as  a  moral  being  clean  out  of  the 
natural  system.  His  dualism  is  quite  frank.  The  moral  and 
the  natural  worlds,  that  of  the  responsible  will  and  that  of  the 
desires,  are  quite  separate.  So  alien  are  these  that  the  subjec- 
tion of  the  desires  can  never  be  complete;  no  action  can  be 
morally  perfect;  the  pursuit  of  the  moral  end  is  along  an 
asymptotic  path  which  never  reaches  its  goal. 

Had  Kant  been  consistent  he  would  have  denied  the  possi- 
bility even  of  a  conflict  between  the  spiritual  and  natural,  or 
bet^veen  duty  and  inclination.  For  even  a  conflict  implies  that 
man  lives  in  both  worlds,  and  that  morality  consists  in  the 
application  of  the  ideal  to  the  actual,  in  the  attempted  con- 
version of  "what  is"  into  "what  ought  to  be." 

The  truth  is  that  man  is  no  more  isolated  as  a  moral  being 
than  he  is  physically.  His  antecedents  and  environment  enter 
into  the  tissue  of  his  soul,  if  we  may  so  speak,  as  they  do  into 
that  of  his  physical  frame.  No  doubt  he  claims  a  distinct  indi- 
viduality, a  personality  which  is  his  own  in  the  fullest  and 
even  in  the  most  exclusive  sense;  and  his  individuality  has 
indefeasible  rights.  But  if  we  isolate  this  individuality,  or 
rather,  if  we  despoil  it  of  all  that  it  has  received  from  its  social 
world,  how  much  of  it  will  remain?  We  can  ask  the  uncom- 
promising individualist  with  his  exclusive  Ego:  "Left  to  your- 
self, and  apart  from  your  community,  what  language  would  you 
speak?  Every  word  you  now  use,  or  have  ever  heard,  is  that 
of  your  country  and  neighbours.  You  have  probably  never 
invented  one.  Deprived  of  this  single  endowment  of  your 
social  world,  you  would  stand  mute  and  helpless  amongst  your 
fellows,  understanding  and  understood  of  no  one.  Would  you 
be  an  intelligent  being?     Granted  your  language,  what  of  the 


108  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

things  which  language  conveys?  Whose  songs  were  sung 
around  your  cradle,  and  whose  fables  delighted  your  dawning 
mind  ?  From  the  time  when  5-our  outlook  on  your  little  world 
was  widened  through  hearing  that  'Jack  and  Jill  went  up  the 
hill'  until,  possibly  like  Lear, 

'A  poor,  infirm,  weak  and  despis'd  old  man,' 
you 

'Bide  the  pelting  of  the  pitiless  storm' 

let  loose  by  man's  wickedness,  and  are  ready  to  cry  with  him 
to  the  'All  shaking  thunder'  to 

'Smite  flat  the  thick  rotundity  of  the  world,' 

it  is  your  country's  thoughts  that  have  gone  with  you  every 
step  of  the  way.  You  are  a  maker  of  some  kind,  if  you  are  a 
worker,  and  if  your  individuality  has  any  use  or  power.  Who 
has  provided  you  with  your  material,  and  taught  your  skilful 
ways  of  dealing  with  it,  and  who  buys  your  product  and 
makes  some  recompense  for  your  toil?  You  have  eaten  your 
morning  meal  at  your  country's  table,  instead  of  gathering 
berries  or  seeking  the  flesh  of  wild  animals  in  the  woods;  you 
have  walked  to  your  work  along  your  country's  roads,  and 
will  return  at  evening  to  a  home,  your  'castle,'  whose  safety 
and  privacy  come  from  your  country's  care.  If  you  are  married 
and  have  children,  and  you  find  an  ample  return  for  all  your 
toil  in  the  constancy  of  their  loyalty  and  the  sweet  service  of 
their  love,  under  whose  charge  and  through  whose  fostering 
has  the  happiness  of  your  hearth  been  made  possible?  It  has 
been  for  countless  centuries  in  the  making.  If  you  examine 
the  material  out  of  which  it  has  been  spun,  you  will  find  therein 
the  trace  of  the  wisdom  and  the  toil  and  the  suffering  and 
the  endurance  of  good  men  in  whom  and  through  whom,  gen- 
eration after  generation,  traditions  were  formed  and  customs 
were  established,  whose  mystic  virtues  have  sufficed  to  change 
the  instincts,  desires,  and  passions  of  primitive  man,  crude  and 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  109 

gross  and  often  lawless  beyond  those  of  brute  beasts,  into  one 
of  the  fairest  possessions  the  heart  of  man  can  desire."  ^ 

It  is  amply  evident  that  if  we  are  to  give  a  true  account  of 
a  man's  rational  nature,  or  personality,  we  cannot  overlook  or 
even  limit  his  indebtedness  to  his  social  world,  or  loosen  the 
bonds  of  his  relations  to  it.  Its  truths  and  errors,  its  merits  and 
defects,  its  limitations  and  achievements  are,  to  a  greater  or 
less  extent,-  his  inheritance.  Whether  that  inheritance  be  rich 
or  poor,  it  is  all  that  intervenes  between  him  and  helpless  idiocy; 
his  indebtedness  to  his  world  as  a  moral  being  is  as  deep,  and 
his  connection  as  intimate  and  constitutive,  as  is  his  physical 
connection  with  it. 

But  moral  philosophers,  and  especially  the  more  Stoical, 
whether  ancient  or  modern,  have  been  somewhat  slow  and  re- 
luctant to  recognize  this  side  of  man's  history.  The  connection, 
if  positive  and  vital,  is  assumed  to  threaten  his  individuality, 
freedom  and  moral  attainments.  The  dualism  of  Kant,  for 
instance,  is  only  moderated  by  T.  H.  Green.  It  is  true  that 
Green  finds  the  spiritual  and  natural  to  be  related  positively, 
but  he  has  left  such  a  priority  to  the  former  as  to  make  it 
possible  to  understand  him  to  establish,  not  a  single  system 
revealing  in  every  part  and  operation  the  presence  and  activity 
of  the  principle,  but  the  natural  plus  the  spiritual,  plus  a  rela- 
tion between  them.  The  externality  and  contingency  of  the 
relation  are  not  overcome.  They  may,  or  may  not,  be  brought 
together.  They  are  not  seen  by  him  to  be  aspects,  or  elements 
of  a  single  real. 

Caird,  whose  Idealism  was  more  pronounced,  insists  in  his 
persistent  way  on  "the  unity  behind  the  difference  of  subject 
and  object."  But  I  think  he  never  explained  the  phrase  or 
illustrated  its  truth  with  a  concrete  example.  And  I  doubt 
whether  he  would  maintain  in  a  decisive  way  that  there  is 
nothing  in  the  mind  or  soul  of  man,  any  more  than  in  his  bodily 
frame — no  element  or  particle  of  his  spiritual  structure — that 
is  not  the  same  as  that  which  exists  in  his  world.  He  would 
scarcely  admit,  I  think,  that  the  world  participates  and  makes 

''■The  Principles  of  Citizenship,  pp.  94-S. 


110  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

possible  the  free  agents'  choice,  and  is  active  in  and  as  his  will. 
He  does  not  plainly  state  that  man  does  nothing,  attempts 
nothing,  conceives  nothing,  in  w^hich  his  long  antecedents  and 
limitless  environment  do  not  participate  more  or  less  directly. 
A  certain  isolation  is  always  maintained  for  man  as  subject. 
But  I  do  not  think  that  the  world  presents  us  with  a  single 
example  of  a  genuinely  isolated  fact:  certainly  not  of  that 
empty  phantom,  an  isolated  personality. 

Nevertheless,  we  find  (again  as  matters  of  fact,  whether  we 
can  explain  them  or  not)  a  certain  independence  of  existence 
and  action,  a  certain  freshness  of  use  of  antecedents,  a  certain 
mastery  over  environment,  on  the  part  of  lower  kinds  of  beings 
than  man,  which  at  least  symbolize  or  point  the  way  towards 
freedom.  Let  me  illustrate  what  I  mean.  Long  ago,  geologists 
tell  us,  central  masses  of  vapour  threw  out  nebulae,  the  nebulae 
formed  systems,  one  of  which  is  the  solar  system;  the  solar 
system  cooled,  condensed,  contracted  into  planets,  amongst 
them  the  earth ;  the  earth  in  turn  cooled  as  to  its  outer  surface 
on  which  we  live,  seasons  succeeded  one  another,  soil  was 
formed,  plants  grew,  and  amongst  them  Tennyson's  "little 
flower  in  the  crannied  wall."  I  believe  our  scientific  teachers 
will  tell  us  that  all  the  vast  changes  we  have  mentioned  were 
preparations,  without  which  the  little  flower  was  not  possible, 
and  that  to  understand  its  full  history  and  structure  we  must 
recognize  that  they  have  all,  in  their  fashion,  entered  into  it. 
In  a  word,  omit  any  one  of  these  antecedents  and  the  little 
flower  is  impossible. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  little  flower,  which  seems  to  be 
nothing  except  the  momentary  resting-place  of  forces  that  are 
eternally  on  their  way,  can  live  not  one  instant  longer  than  it 
can  keep  these  forces  at  bay.  It  stands  opposed  to  the  big 
world.  Nothing  from  that  world  is  allowed  within  unless  it 
is  first  transmuted  by  the  little  plant  into  sustenance.  The 
outer  world  of  the  little  flower  is  mastered  and  made  to  serve 
so  long  as  the  plant  is  living.  Its  world  becomes  its  food, 
drink,  air,  light  or  warmth.  Selection  takes  place  on  the  part 
of  the  plant.     The  plant  takes  up  what  it  requires  and  rejects 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  111 

the  rest.  That  which  it  takes  up  it  assimilates,  changes,  incor- 
porates with  itself.  In  a  word,  the  plant  re-acts  in  its  own 
unique  fashion,  and  makes  use  of  its  little  world  for  its  own 
purposes.  Its  connection  with  that  world  is  not  severed.  It 
is  utilized.  It  is  the  powers  which  it  has  borrowed  from  its 
world  that  the  plant  employs  in  its  recoil  upon  the  world. 
There  is  a  certain  aloofness  on  the  part  of  the  plant  and  a  kind 
of  individuality;  but  it  is  the  aloofness  of  mastery  and  tem- 
porary sovereignty.     There  is  no  break. 

The  life  of  the  plant,  in  this  way,  revealing  itself  in  what 
it  does,  gives  us  the  first  hint  of  the  nature  of  an  independent 
individuality.  Every  one  of  the  main  characteristics  is  adum- 
brated. There  is,  in  the  first  place,  that  appropriation  of  what 
is  without,  that  negation  of  otherness,  which  we  do  not  find 
explicit  in  the  physical  world,  where  mutual  exclusion  rules. 
In  the  next  place,  there  is  the  actual  reconciliation  of  com- 
munity and  privacy.  There  is  no  doubt  that  the  activities 
turned  by  the  plant  upon  its  world  are  those  of  the  world; 
nevertheless,  they  are  peculiarly  its  own  private  possession. 
Lastly,  there  is  a  hint  of  freedom,  of  a  tendency  and  way  of 
action  which — whatever  their  history — spring  up  anew,  as  if 
newly  originated  and  focussed  in  the  life  of  the  plant. 

But  all  these  truths  are  merely  foreshadowed  in  the  plant. 
The  biologist,  following  the  guidance  of  the  world  of  life  in 
plants  and  animals,  can  show  us,  stage  by  stage,  the  growing 
strength  of  these  propensities.  The  powers  of  the  living  crea- 
ture multiply ;  its  world  becomes  wider ;  it  appropriates  and  as- 
similates more  elements;  its  participation  in  what  is  common 
becomes  fuller,  and  its  uses  of  it  are  more  various  and  effective. 
Above  all,  the  intimacy  of  the  living  thing  and  its  world  be- 
comes more  close ;  for  sensation  appears,  and  there  follow  fuller 
and  clearer  forms  of  consciousness  which  annul  the  foreignness 
of  the  object.  At  the  same  time  the  privacy  and  the  subjectiv- 
ity, and  consequent  independence  of  the  living  thing,  also 
develop.  Both  of  these  apparently  incompatible  but  really 
mutually  implicative  tendencies  culminate  in  a  rational  animal 
we  call  man,  and  reveal  their  fullest  nature  when  man  is  at 


112  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

his  best.  The  little  man  is  the  self-enclosed  man.  It  is  the 
great  and  good  man  in  whom  a  wide  world  lives  again.  In 
him  its  purposes  gain  definiteness  and  direction;  and  it  is  he 
who  has  a  great  individuality.  There  is  accord  within  and 
without  between  the  best  man  and  the  best  possibilities  of  his 
time.  And  when  tendencies  within  and  without  are  at  one,  and 
the  law  of  things  is  the  law  of  life,  natural  or  spiritual  as  the 
case  may  be,  then  there  is  freedom. 

Freedom  is  fullest  when  ideal  and  real  are  in  full  accord. 
For  there  are  degrees  of  freedom.  Freedom  is  not  only  power 
to  conceive,  but  also  to  carry  out  purposes.  It  is  an  active 
power,  not  frustrated  by  the  environment,  but  able  to  employ 
it.  From  this  point  of  view  we  may  affirm  that  mankind  is  on 
its  way  to  freedom.  As  man's  knowledge  of  things,  of  their 
nature  and  capacities  for  service  grows;  still  more  especially, 
as  its  conception  of  the  relative  value  of  utilities  becomes  more 
just,  and,  as  a  consequence,  its  enterprises  become  ever  more 
directly  spiritual  in  ultimate  intention,  the  law  of  the  Whole 
becomes,  more  and  more,  not  only  an  inner  desire  but  an  inner 
necessity,  though  a  necessity  freely  chosen.  Duty  is  then  veri- 
tably categorical  and  the  good  sovereign.  That  which  is  with- 
out serves.  Thus,  after  all,  it  is  the  good  and  the  wise,  the 
best  servants  of  mankind,  who  "have  the  world  at  their  feet." 

But  it  is  time  that  we  should  turn  back  upon  the  main  issue. 
That  which  I  have  been  trying  to  show  is  a  subordinate  truth, 
and  only  indirectly  relevant  to  the  main  issue.  I  have  insisted 
that  the  problem  of  Idealism,  which  for  me  is  the  philosophy  of 
the  future,  involves  an  unstinted  recognition  of  both  the  unity 
and  continuity  of  the  moral  being  with  the  world,  and  his  in- 
dependence or  freedom,  I  have  indicated  that,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  freedom  does  not  imply  severance  from  the  world;  that 
severance  means  helplessness ;  and  that  man  is  free  not  from  his 
world,  but  by  means  of  his  world.  His  world  is  the  partner 
of  his  spiritual  enterprises,  and  he  achieves  in  the  degree  in 
which  he  liberates  the  truest  meaning  and  highest  possibilities 
of  the  universe.  At  first  sight  morality,  which  cannot  com- 
promise freedom  in  any  way  or  degree,  seems  to  isolate  man ; 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  113 

at  first  sight  religion,  which  cannot  compromise  the  intimacy  of 
man's  relation  to  the  object  of  his  worship,  seems  to  make  what 
is  Divine  and  Infinite  overflow  and  overpower  his  finitude,  so 
that  he  no  longer  counts.  He  is  one  with,  lost  in,  the  object 
of  his  worship,  the  God  whom  he  serves  and  loves.  This  we 
believe  to  be  a  one-sided,  and  therefore  a  false  reading  of  both 
morality  and  religion.  Man  is  free  but  not  isolated;  he  loses 
himself  in  his  God,  but  only  because  in  that  act  he  has  found 
himself.  At  the  heart  of  morality  there  is  a  positive  relation 
to  the  universe  and  its  divine  principle ;  at  the  heart  of  religion 
there  is  a  limitless  exaltation  of  the  value  of  the  finite  personality 
and  a  deepening  of  the  effective  powers  of  individuality. 

But  we  have  to  prove  these  truths,  and  prove  them  after 
doing  full  justice  to  the  difficulties. 

The  first  of  these  diflficulties,  as  we  have  seen  in  part,  arises 
from  the  fact  that  as  a  moral  being,  doing  what  is  morally 
right  or  wrong,  the  agent  must  be  alone  responsible, — the  sole 
author  of  his  own  deeds.  Moral  responsibility  cannot  be 
shared.  Every  participator  in  a  common  act  is  responsible 
for  the  whole  of  it.  The  moral  actions  of  a  man  express  his 
own  individuality.  To  deny  this  solitary  and  complete  respon- 
sibility of  the  moral  agent  is  to  destroy  morality. 

But  may  the  moral  world  not  be  a  delusion,  the  creation  of 
man's  self-importance?  May  not  the  actions  of  man  have  no 
more  significance  from  the  point  of  view  of  a  higher  being  than 
the  busy  toil  of  an  ant-heap  has  for  man?  I  do  not  think  this 
is  so.  But  once  grant  the  reality  of  the  moral  world — once 
acknowledge  the  nature  of  the  demands  which  we  call  duties — 
once  grant  that  a  man  can  and  does  now  seek,  now  betray,  a 
good  that  is  absolute,  and  there  can  no  longer  be  any  doubt 
as  to  the  nature  and  extent  of  his  responsibilities,  or  of  the 
binding  and  categorical  nature  of  duty.  Love  turns  its  obliga- 
toriness into  a  yearning  desire.  We  may  say  with  the  won- 
derful author  of  the  119th  Psalm  "Thy  law  is  my  delight."^ 

But  the  change  only  makes  the  authority  of  the  law  more 
full  by  converting  it  into  a  law  of  freedom.     The  duty  be- 

iSee  Ps.  cxix.  40,  45,  47,  92,  97,  163,  174. 


114  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

comes  the  greatest  of  all  privileges  and  delights,  as  well  as  an 
obligation.  The  truth  is  that  a  man  is  what  he  does.  (This 
holds  of  all  objects,  and,  as  we  may  see  hereafter,  it  is  a  most 
important  truth,  carrying  vast  consequences.)  He  is  not  only 
manifested  or  expressed  in  his  actions.  His  series  of  deeds  are 
his  living  personality  reacting  upon  its  environment,  and  at- 
taining thereby  either  fresh  characteristics  or  a  fuller  develop- 
ment of  its  present  features.  Moral  action  is  not  a  mere  mat- 
ter of  the  will,  or  of  a  self  other  than,  and  lurking  somewhere 
behind,  its  activities;  it  is  the  individual  in  process  of  lifting 
"what  is"  to  the  level  of  "what  ought  to  be."  Take  away  the 
personality  and  there  are  no  actions;  take  away  the  actions, 
and  there  is  left  only  the  promise  and  possibilities  of  a  per- 
sonality. A  man  is  not  at  all  except  as  at  least  capable  of  cer- 
tain waj's  of  behaviour.  These  ways  are  his  character,  and 
his  character  is  his  concrete  self. 

What  the  history  of  his  self  may  be,  or  the  range  of  his 
personality;  how  much  and  what  of  the  past  of  the  world  and 
of  its  present  social  and  other  forces  operate  within  him  as 
elements  of  his  living  self;  how  far  he  can  reach  his  hand  and 
help  or  harm  the  world,  these  things  do  not  concern  us  at 
present.  What  I  maintain  is  that  his  moral  responsibility  and 
his  personal  action  are  coextensive,  or  that  his  good  and  bad 
deeds  are  his  alone.  He  is  the  heir  of  a  very  ancient  and  a 
very  crude  ancestry — reaching  back  to  the  dwellers  in  caves  and 
the  tree-tops;  a  very  mixed  and  most  powerful  accumulation 
of  social  influences,  good  and  bad,  of  traditions  true  and  false, 
play  around  him  no  less  constantly  than  the  forces  of  the  phys- 
ical world.  He  is  tossed  by  these  forces,  it  would  seem,  like  a 
bit  of  sea-weed  on  the  ocean  wave.  All  the  same,  those  actions 
which  we  call  right  or  wrong  are  the  actions  in  which  he  ex- 
presses his  rational  nature,  his  veritable  manhood,  and  are  as 
much  the  outcome  of  his  personality  as  if  he  stood  alone  in  an 
empty  universe.  There  can  be  no  denying  the  fact  that  moral- 
ity isolates.  The  repentant  sinner  never  lessens  or  shares  his 
blame.  "I  acknowledge  my  transgressions  and  my  sin  is  ever 
before  me.     Against  thee,  thee  only  have  I  sinned  and  done 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  115 

this  evil  in  thy  sight,  that  thou  mightest  be  justified  when  thou 
speakest,  and  be  clear  when  thou  judgest." '  The  man  upon 
whom  the  light  of  the  moral  world  has  broken  makes  no 
excuses. 

In  these  days  it  is  somewhat  customary  to  melt  down  the 
individuality  of  man  into  antecedents  and  environment;  and, 
because  the  unity  of  man  with  his  world  is  assumed  to  be  in- 
consistent with  his  freedom,  this  melting  down  of  man  is  at 
the  expense  of  his  responsibility  as  a  moral  being.  For  these 
reasons  the  focal  intensity,  the  privacy,  the  solitariness,  the 
exclusiveness  of  the  self  can  bear  some  emphasis;  and  I  make 
no  apology  in  closing  this  lecture  for  referring  once  more  to 
our  biologists.  They  tell  us  that  all  the  universe  has  been 
at  work  preparing  for  the 

"golden  daflFodils, 
Beside  the   lake,   beneath  the  trees. 
Fluttering  and  dancing  in  the  breeze." 

They  are  engaged  in  exhibiting  the  affinity  of  the  daffodils  to 
the  life  that  went  before  and  came  after  them.  The  biological 
world  is  one  wondrous  whole.  Nevertheless,  every  one  of 
these  dancing  deities  has  to  maintain  itself  against,  as  well  as 
by  means  of,  the  world.  Without  their  response,  without  the 
spontaneous  reaction  of  their  apparently  independent  single 
and  separate  lives,  all  the  universe  could  not  maintain  the 
daffodils.  There  are  things  that  every  daffodil,  in  order  to  be 
a  daffodill,  must  do  for  itself  and  in  its  own  way. 

How  much  more  evident  all  this  becomes  when  we  deal 
with  man,  even  when  he  is  very  rudimentary.  Until  the  mind 
of  the  child  works,  not  all  his  teachers  can  show  him  that  two 
and  two  make  four.  Life,  and  living  mind  above  all,  remakes 
all  its  content.  Memory,  for  instance,  is  no  passive  substance 
upon  which  you  can  make  an  impression.  Understanding  (or 
experience)  is  not  a  mere  receptacle  into  which  truths  can  be 
poured.    Every  mind  must  create  its  possessions. 

This  privacy  of  man's  activities  is  perhaps  even  more  evident 
when  we  observe  his  ethical  conduct.     Moral  personality  can- 

»See  Ps.  li.  3  and  4. 


116  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

not  be  overcome  by  force.  Personality  ends,  just  as  natural 
life  perishes,  when  mere  force  enters.  But  personality  is  never 
overcome  unless  it  surrenders.  If  there  be  no  traitor  within  to 
hold  parley  with  the  enemy  without,  the  self  is  safe  from  all 
the  assaults  of  temptation.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  not  less 
within  our  power  to  withstand  the  onsets  of  the  benevolent 
and  helpful  powers  of  the  world.  We  have  seen  youths  callous 
to  all  the  pleadings  of  their  parents;  we  have  seen  parents  re- 
gardless of  the  misery  their  intemperance  brings;  and,  possibly, 
we  have  ourselves  turned  a  deaf  ear  to  the  nature  of  things, 
when  it  warns  us  of  the  consequences  of  our  deeds.  But  the 
environment  cannot  dictate.  No  one  can  enslave  a  man  except 
the  man  himself.  He  is  limited,  not  by  his  surroundings,  but 
by  his  own  pettiness — his  ignorance,  his  meanness,  his  selfish- 
ness. It  is  only  in  relation  to  the  moral  agent  that  the  en- 
vironment acquires  any  power  for  either  good  or  evil.  It  takes 
its  character  from  him.  The  environment  which  to  one  man 
is  the  means  of  his  degeneration  into  duplicity  or  selfishness  is 
for  another  the  opportunity  for  an  honest  and  generous  life. 
However  much  we  insist  upon  morality  as  the  application  of 
principles  to  circumstances,  and  upon  the  intimacy  of  their 
relation,  we  must  not  obscure  the  fact  that  it  is  from  the  side 
of  the  agent  that  the  moral  qualities  spring. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  nature  in  itself  has  no  ethical  char- 
acter, we  must  not  forget  that  nature  in  itself  is  an  abstract 
fiction,  a  mere  aspect  of  what  is  real.  And  in  the  second  place, 
the  fact  that  nature  in  itself  is  neither  moral  nor  immoral,  and 
that  it  is  the  material  on  which  the  bad  and  good  will  alike 
operate,  does  not  justify  us  in  assuming  that  it  lends  itself  to 
the  uses  of  the  wicked  will  with  the  same  entirety  and  finality 
as  it  does  to  those  of  the  good  will.  The  nature  of  things 
taken  in  its  full  compass  is  rational. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  man,  on  occasion,  re-interprets  the 
world  in  which  he  lives,  and  that  he  does  it  in  a  most  funda- 
mental way.  There  is  order  where  once  there  was  chaos,  the 
rule  of  righteousness  instead  of  blind  destiny ;  hope  where  there 
was  naught  but  despair  and  heart-break;  beauty  and  kindness 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  117 

instead  of  ugliness  and  heartlessness.     Paracelsus  saw  no  good 
in  man  till,  in  his  own  heart,  love  had 

"been  made  wise 
To  trace  love's  faint  beginnings  in  mankind, 
To  know  even  hate  is  but  a  mask  of  love's; 
To  see  a  good  in  evil,  and  a  hope 
In  ill-success;  to  sympathize,  be  proud 
Of  their  half-reasons,  faint  aspirings,  dim 
Struggles  for  truth." 

The  world  is  made  new.     It  becomes  the  scene  of  the  opera- 
tion of  universal  Love:  God's  own  workshop. 

But  at  this  point  morality  seems  to  merge  into  religion,  and 
what  we  have  to  do  with  at  present  is  their  contradiction. 


LECTURE  X 

MORALITY  A   PROCESS  THAT  ALWAYS  ATTAINS 

Without  pretending  to  deal  in  an  intimate  way  with  the 
problem  of  the  first  emergence  or  the  nature  of  life,  nor  to 
contribute  to  the  discussion  of  any  of  the  problems  upon  which 
biologists  are  divided  and  which  are  capable  of  being  decided 
on  biological  evidence,  I  have  ventured  to  indicate  two  facts 
which  are,  I  believe,  unanimously  admitted  and  regarded  as 
fundamental.  The  first  is  that  the  lowest  living  plant  is  the 
result  of  long  anterior  conditions  which  somehow  are  focussed 
and  active  in  it;  and  the  second  is  that  in  reacting  upon  its 
environment  it  employs  these  borrowed  powers  and  these  only, 
and  employs  them  in  its  own  way.  It  really  is  these  conditions 
united  and  active.  The  daffodil  in  virtue  of  that  which  it  has 
borrowed  from  its  world  and  made  a  part  of  its  living  structure 
acts  as  a  daffodil.  Every  daffodil  for  and  by  itself  turns  round 
upon  the  universe  what  the  universe  has  lent  to  it,  and  thereby 
produces  its  own  unique  result. 

Rational  life  presents  the  same  features.  But  it  borrows 
more  extensively,  and  its  reaction  upon  its  world  by  means  of 
its  world  is  far  more  potent.  In  a  word,  the  dependence  of 
man  as  a  rational  being  upon  his  antecedents  is  fuller  and  more 
varied  than  that  of  any  other  of  nature's  products;  but  his  in- 
dependence and  the  uniqueness  of  his  reaction  are  also  more 
significant  and  full.  In  him,  in  fact,  independence  becomes 
freedom.  What  he  requires  from,  or  seeks  for,  in  his  world 
is  that  which  he  believes  will  satisfy  or  fulfil  or  realize  him- 
self; and  his  interpretation  of  his  self,  its  nature,  its  needs  and 
what  will  fulfil  them  is  his  own  interpretation.      Hence  he 

118 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  119 

defines  his  own  ideals,  and  acts  in  obedience  to  ends  he  him- 
self has  set  up.  No  one  can  do  these  things  instead  of  him, 
forming  his  conceptions  or  willing  their  realization  instead 
of  him.  If  his  interpretation  of  the  nature  and  needs  of  the 
self,  and  therefore  of  the  good,  is  wrong,  it  is  his  own;  if  it  is 
right,  it  is  his  own.  No  one  can  recognize  a  man's  duty  in- 
stead of  him;  nor  neglect  it  except  himself.  This  means  that 
the  immanence  of  the  activity  of  the  universe  becomes  in  man 
an  activity  that  is  free.  And  it  carries  with  it  the  conditions 
necessary  for  actions  which  have  a  moral  character  and  can  be 
called  in  the  fulness  of  the  meaning  of  the  word,  right  or 
wrong.  The  power  that  is  operative  reveals  itself  as  a  "power 
working  for  righteousness"  in  the  form  of  individual  wills. 
And  moral  right  or  wrong  is  right  or  wrong  in  a  final  and 
ultimate  sense.  Morality  undoubtedly  demands  this  final  un- 
divided or  individual  responsibility.  However  true  it  may  be 
that  we  ought  and  can  bear  one  another's  burdens,  we  cannot 
commit  one  another's  right  or  wrong  actions.  Mine  are  mine 
and  my  neighbour's  are  my  neighbour's  to  the  end  of  time,  and 
whatever  takes  place.  We  may  be  more  than  willing  to  bear 
the  burden  of  the  consequences  of  the  ill-doing  of  others,  and 
we  do  not  hesitate  to  share  the  good  things  our  helpful  social 
environment  provides,  but  the  privacy  of  the  actual  volitions 
and  deeds  stands  wholly  unimpaired.  The  responsibility  and 
the  guilt  of  the  bad  act  cling  to  the  doer  only,  and  the  sense 
of  them  often  seems  more  imperishable  than  any  of  its  other 
consequences.  The  "stain"  will  not  wash.  Let  others  be  ever 
so  generous  in  the  way  of  forgiving  and  forgetting  our  wrong 
acts,  there  may  be  amongst  them  some  deeds  whose  meanness 
and  selfishness  are  such  that  we  can  never  forgive  ourselves  for 
doing  them.  We  cannot  annihilate  nor  utterly  repudiate  the 
past  self.  And  if,  as  a  Welsh  hymn  suggests,  the  songs  in 
Zion  are  the  sweeter  for  the  forgiven  sins  of  the  saints,  they  are 
also  tear-stained.  Even  forgiven  sins  are  not  forgotten  by 
those  who  committed  them ;  nor  are  they  occasions  of  unmingled 

joy. 

But  all  these  conditions,  which  seem  to  be  vital  to  the  moral 


120  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

consciousness,  are  simply  swept  aside  by  the  religious  conscious- 
ness. Religion  in  all  its  highest  forms  appears  to  break  down 
the  barriers  of  the  separate  and  individually  responsible  person- 
alities. Nay,  religion  seems  utterly  to  repudiate  and  destroy 
such  individuality.  For  it  identifies  the  worshipper  with  his 
God,  and  the  worshipper  joyously  loses  himself  in  the  object  of 
his  devotion  and  love. 

"Faith  is  not  merely  a  history  or  a  science.  To  have  faith  is 
nought  else  than  for  a  man  to  make  his  will  one  with  God's,  and 
take  up  God's  word  and  might  in  his  will,  so  that  these  twain, 
God's  will  and  man's  will,  turn  to  one  being  and  substance."  ^ 

"Faith  then,"  continues  Mr.  Bradley,  "is  the  recognition  of 
my  true  self  in  the  religious  object,  and  the  identification  of 
myself  with  that  both  by  judgment  and  will ;  the  determination 
to  negate  the  self  opposed  to  the  object  by  making  the  whole 
self  one  with  what  it  really  is.  It  is,  in  a  word,  of  the  heart. 
It  is  the  belief  that  only  the  ideal  is  real,  and  the  will  to  realize 
therefore  nothing  but  the  ideal,  the  theoretical  and  practical 
assertion  that  only  as  ideal  is  the  self  real. 

"Justification  by  faith  means  that,  having  thus  identified  my- 
self with  the  object,  I  feel  myself  in  that  identification  to  be 
already  one  with  it,  and  to  enjoy  the  bliss  of  being,  all  falsehood 
overcome,  what  I  truly  am.  By  my  claim  to  be  one  with  the 
ideal,  which  comprehends  me  too,  and  by  assertion  of  the  non- 
reality  of  all  that  is  opposed  to  it,  the  evil  in  the  world  and  the 
evil  incarnate  in  me  through  past  bad  acts,  all  this  falls  into  the 
unreal :  I  being  one  with  the  ideal,  this  is  not  mine,  and  so  im- 
putation of  offences  goes  with  the  change  of  self,  and  applies  not 
now  to  my  true  self,  but  to  the  unreal,  which  I  repudiate  and 
hand  over  to  destruction."  ' 

It  is  in  that  it  identifies  man  with  his  ideal,  or  that  man  is 
reconciled  to  be  made  one  with  his  God,  that  religion  reveals 
its  nature.  The  separate,  independent  solitary  self,  facing  the 
responsibilities  of  its  own  errors,  has  been  left  behind.  Its  place 
is  taken  by  a  self  that  is  flooded,  inundated,  with  its  conscious- 

^Jacob  Bohme  quoted  by  Mr.  F.  H.  Bradley,  Ethical  Studies,  p.  292. 
''Ethical  Studies,  pp.  292-3. 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  121 

ness  of  God.  The  old  self  was  exclusive.  Henceforth  the  indi- 
vidual goes  forth  in  the  strength  of  his  God.  The  new  self  has 
no  exclusive  ends ;  however  private  they  are,  they  are  not  selfish. 
It  has  no  will  that  is  merely  its  own.  It  is  only  God's  will. 
Existence,  purpose,  value — all  that  secures  either  reality  or 
worth — come  from  elsewhere;  from  the  ideal  object  of  devotion. 
'Tor  to  me  to  live  is  Christ."  ^  "Whether  we  live,  therefore,  or 
die,  we  are  the  Lord's."^  "I  live;  yet  not  I,  but  Christ  liveth 
in  me."  '  Such  are  the  expressions  of  one  of  the  greatest  expon- 
ents of  the  religious  consciousness  that  the  world  has  known,  and 
the  religious  experience  of  mankind  is  their  reaffirmation.  Nor 
do  I  think  that  it  is  possible  to  modify  them.  There  is  not,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  any  limit  to  the  identification  of  the  worshipper 
and  his  God  in  a  true  religion.  From  that  point  of  view  not  a 
shred  or  shadow  of  the  old  self  remains.  The  present  self  and 
its  ends,  the  world  in  which  it  lives  and  its  values — everything 
is  new  and  the  past  is  not  any  more. 

But  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  there  is  another  point  of 
view — that  of  morality ;  and  the  moral  consciousness  cannot  and 
must  not  utterly  part  with  the  past,  or  treat  it  as  if  it  had  never 
been.  The  identification  with  the  ideal  must  not  be  by  the  anni- 
hilation of  the  self.  If  the  separateness  of  the  self  is  destroyed  as 
morality  advances,  its  responsibilities  must  be  preserved.  Re- 
pentant man,  who  turns  or  rather  returns  to  his  God,  may,  like 
the  prodigal  son,  leave  nothing  but  husks  behind  him.  He  is 
parting  only  with  that  which  is  worthless.  Nevertheless,  the 
son  that  returns  has  been  in  a  far  country  and  shared  the  food  of 
pigs.  However  true  it  is  that  the  religious  consciousness  some- 
how, through  man's  union  with  God,  blots  out  man's  sins  with- 
out making  God  share  in  their  guilt,  the  sins  were  committed. 
The  world  is  not  the  same  as  if  the  sins  had  never  been,  nor  is 
the  agent  who  committed  them.  From  the  moral  point  of  view, 
in  fact,  the  wrong  actions  remain  irremediable,  indelible  stains 
that  nothing  can  lift  away  as  if  they  had  never  been.  They  are 
sources  of  bitter  sorrow  to  him  who  has  committed  them,  as  well 
as  of  deep  joy  and  thankfulness  and  wonder  once  they  have  been 

iPhil.  i.  21.  -Rom.  .xiv.  8.  ^G^i,  jj_  20. 


122  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

forgiven.  They  count  "as  if"  they  had  never  been;  but  the  "as 
if"  remains. 

Possibly  the  most  usual  way  of  dealing  with  the  difficulty 
arising  from  this  apparently  direct  contradiction  of  religion  and 
morality  is  that  of  treating  this  identification  of  man  with  his 
ideal,  which  is  the  central  fact  of  religion,  simply  as  a  mystery. 
"This  overcoming  of  all  the  usual  barriers  between  the  indi- 
vidual and  the  absolute  is  the  great  mystic  achievement,"  says 
William  James.^  The  need  of  explaining  it  disappears  when  it 
is  called  "mystic,"  and  all  rational  judgment  is  suspended. 
Moreover  this  quality  as  a  mystery  is  somehow  supposed  to  add 
to  its  convincingness  and  worth.  It  is  meant,  as  a  rule,  that  it 
intoxicates  the  soul  with  the  sense  of  the  nearness  of  God  and 
precludes  all  its  rational  operations.  But  philosophy  has  no  right 
to  avail  itself  of  the  methods  of  mysticism. 

When  oneness  with  God  is  not  left  merely  mystical,  it  is  often 
interpreted  in  terms  of  feeling.  And  the  love  which  religion 
implies  is  taken  to  be  mere  emotion,  a  form  of  sentimental  self- 
indulgence.^  But  love  as  a  sentiment  is  antagonistic  to  inde- 
pendence; the  oneness  with  its  object  which  such  love  secures  is 
at  the  expense  of  individuality ;  for  it  merges  the  individual  in  it 
for  the  time  being,  instead  of  leaving  him  strengthened  and  en- 
liched.  If  this  were  the  only  love  that  united  God  and  man  in 
religion,  then  the  reconciliation  of  religion  with  morality  would 
be  finally  impossible. 

But  there  is  a  higher  and  truer  love  than  that  which  is  senti- 
mental, and  a  saner  than  that  which  is  mystical.  It  is  that  which 
unites  wills  and  leaves  them  standing.  It  is  a  spirit  of  service. 
It  is  the  love  of  the  mother  for  the  child — the  most  marvellous 
and  beautiful  in  our  world — making  his  good  her  whole  concern 
day  and  night.  It  is  the  love  of  man  for  woman  and  of  woman 
for  man  which  makes  the  happy  domestic  hearth,  the  best  sym- 
bol of  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  It  is  the  love  of  the  citizen  for 
good  causes  and  of  the  patriot  for  his  country.  It  not  only 
allows  but  it  invites  the  free  and  full  expression  of  separate  per- 

^Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,  p.  419. 

•Vide  some  of  our  popular  hymns,  e.g.   "Safe   in   the  arms  of  Jesus." 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  12^ 

sonalities.  And  it  is  full  of  practical  enterprise,  ever  sending 
the  saviours  of  mankind  into  the  wilderness  in  search  of  lost 
sheep. 

Moreover,  the  sense  of  oneness  with  God,  or  of  dependence 
upon  him,  which  is  essential  to  religion,  degenerates  into  passiv- 
ity if  it  be  not  thus  the  source  of  spiritual  energy. 

I  shall  try  to  show  that  religion  when  it  thus  implies  a  love 
which  strengthens  individuality  and  fills  it  with  the  spirit  of 
service  is  reconcilable  with  morality.  For  the  present  my  aim 
has  been  to  reject  the  methods  of  mysticism  and  sentimental  love 
because  they  make  that  reconciliation  seem  easy,  while  in  truth 
they  make  it  impossible. 

There  are  ways  of  misrepresenting  morality  which  have  the 
same  results  as  these  waj^s  of  misrepresenting  religion.  They 
also,  in  like  manner,  seem  easy,  but  are  delusive.  Amongst  these 
ways  of  making  room  for  religion  at  the  expense  of  morality 
perhaps  the  most  common  is  that  which  represents  morality  as 
the  scene  of  constant  and  inevitable  failure  on  the  part  of  man- 
kind. Every  act  that  man  performs  is  held  to  fall  short  of  what 
"ought  to  be."  We  must  pursue,  but  we  cannot  attain; 
approach,  though  we  can  never  reach ;  for  the  complete  identifi- 
cation of  the  actual  and  the  ideal  were  the  end  of  all  effort,  and 
therefore  of  morality.  And  inasmuch  as  moralit}^  is  on  this  view 
nothing  but  the  scene  of  constant  and  inevitable  failure,  and  as 
the  ideal  which  alone  is  truly  real  is  never  reached,  we  have  only 
to  sweep  it  and  all  it  concerns  out  of  sight.  We  must  turn 
against  it  as  against  that  which  has  neither  true  reality  (for  the 
good  deeds  are  not  done)  nor  value.  The  moral  world,  on  this 
view,  is  the  world  of  mere  appearances,  and  need  not  count  for 
the  religious  consciousness.  Only  that  counts  which  is  done  in 
the  spirit  and  service  of  religion:  for  that  alone  is,  in  the  last 
resort,  ideal  and  therefore  real. 

But  not  even  for  the  sake  of  the  religious  consciousness  can 
we  repudiate  the  world  of  endeavour,  or  deny  the  reality  and  the 
value  of  the  moral  act.  And,  for  my  part,  I  cannot  admit  that 
all  man's  moral  actions  are  failures.  Some  of  them,  I  believe, 
are  perfect ;  and  not  even  the  poorest  of  them  is  a  mere  failure, 


124  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

attaining  and  amounting  to  nothing.  The  religious  devotees 
who  call  moral  actions  "trash"  and  affirm  that  we  are  all  as  an 
unclean  thing,  and  all  our  religiousness  as  "filthy  rags"  are,  I 
believe,  proceeding  on  a  wrong  supposition  in  passing  their 
judgment. 

It  is  quite  true  that  no  moral  act  exhausts  the  moral  situation. 
It  does  not  fulfil  the  whole  of  the  moral  law.  Some  aspect  of 
the  good  remains  unrealized.  The  situation  in  morality  has  its 
strict  analogue  in  man's  knowledge.  We  know  no  single  fact 
absolutely  through  and  through,  or  with  absolute  certainty. 
Every  fact  as  part  of  the  universe  has  infinite  suggestiveness, 
and  we  never  exhaust  its  meaning.  But  it  by  no  means  follows 
that  we  know  nothing  of  the  fact,  or  that  our  knowledge  is  sim- 
ply a  delusion  and  an  error.  It  is  sound  so  far  as  it  goes,  and  in 
virtue  of  "the  more"  which  it  implies.  So  it  is  in  morality.  The 
moral  law  does  not  at  any  time  demand  realization  in  all  the  ful- 
ness of  its  possible  applications.  These  are  infinite.  What  is 
required  is  the  application  of  the  moral  law  to  the  particular  cir- 
cumstances so  as  to  elicit  from  them  their  highest  meaning  and 
value.  Morality,  on  one  side,  is  a  system  of  eternal  principles, 
and  neither  place  nor  time  nor  circumstance  can  lower  or  limit 
its  demands.  This  was  the  aspect  that  Kant  accentuated,  and 
which  is  usually  most  in  evidence.  But  morality  is  also  the  ap- 
plication of  eternal  principles  to  the  demands  of  the  moment. 
Merely  as  a  system  of  principles,  morality  loses  its  vital  signifi- 
cance and  sinks  into  theoretic  opinion.  But  morality  implies 
volition  and  "the  carrying  out"  of  principles,  as  we  say.  It 
brings  with  it  purposes  which  re-interpret  natural  circumstance 
and  lift  it  into  a  spiritual  fact.  The  principle  must  await  the 
call  of  circumstance,  and  is,  in  that  sense,  though  in  that  sense 
only,  at  its  beck.  The  right  act,  amongst  other  good  qualities, 
has  that  of  being  timely — the  precise  act  required.  Hence  fol- 
low the  endless  forms  which  the  good  act  may  take:  for  the 
variety  of  the  demands  of  the  circumstances  of  human  life  is 
itself  endless.  Hence,  also,  the  moral  task  is  never  done,  nor 
the  moral  enterprise  shut  down  as  concluded. 

In  fact,  morality  is  a  process.     In  order  to  be  at  all,  it  must 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  126 

be  in  operation.  Let  no  one  will  what  is  right  any  more,  and 
"the  moral  world"  simply  ceases  to  exist.  It  is  continued  voli- 
tion, the  uninterrupted  willing  of  what  is  good  which  keeps  it 
in  being.  All  spiritual  facts  imply  a  similar  condition:  that  is 
to  say,  they  exist  only  so  long  as  they  are  being  produced.  The 
spiritual  world  is  a  constant  creation.  Knowledge,  for  in- 
stance, no  less  than  morality,  exists  only  so  long  as  the  process 
of  knowing  is  carried  on. 

There  never  was  and  never  will  be  "a  world  of  ideas"  in  the 
sense  of  a  system  of  mental  entities,  other  than,  though  some- 
how true  of,  the  world  of  facts  and  events,  and,  as  Lotze 
thought,  needlessly  duplicating  it.  I  doubt  if  there  ever  was  a 
more  persistent  or  widespread  error,  which  gives  philosophers 
more  trouble,  than  this  reification  of  ideas.  Ideas  are  not  like, 
nor  are  they  symbolic  of,  nor  do  they  correspond  or  in  any  way 
point  to  objects.  They  don't  exist.  There  are  minds  which  in 
relation  to  objects  carry  on  a  process  called  knowing,  and  there 
are  objects  which  guide  and  control  and  inspire  their  opera- 
tions. But  there  is  no  third  world  of  entities,  as  men  who 
speak  of  the  world  of  ideas  seem  to  think.  Neither  is  there  a 
moral  world,  consisting,  in  an  analogous  way,  of  unchanging 
categorical  laws,  or  of  a  system  of  static  imperatives,  or,  of 
accomplished  right  or  wrong  actions.  The  world  of  ideas  is 
a  world  in  which  rational  beings  carry  on  the  processes  of  the 
intelligence;  it  is  these  processes.  And  in  a  similar  way  the 
moral  world  is  the  process  of  the  active  volitions  of  rational 
beings  seeking  to  convert  what  is  to  what  ought  to  be,  or  to 
realize  their  ideals.  The  forces  of  the  natural  world  are  not  in 
more  constant  operation  than  are  those  of  the  world  of  spirit, 
the  world  of  knowing  and  willing;  nor  are  they  more  consti- 
tutive in  character.  In  other  words,  as  the  natural  world  is 
the  scene  of  unremitting  active  energy,  which,  however  it  may 
change  its  form,  is  never  spent  and  lost;  so  the  spiritual  world 
is  the  scene  of  spiritual  energy,  whose  forms  are  never  ex- 
hausted however  they  may  change. 

Both  ideas  and  volitions  are  ways  in  which  spirit  operates. 
Stop  the  operation,  and  they  cease  to  exist.     The  worlds  of 


126  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

knowledge  and  morality  as  static  entities  philosophy  has  j^et 
to  banish,  first  from  its  own  precincts  and  then  from  the  com- 
mon consciousness.  So  far  it  has  been  much  occupied  in  the 
attempt  to  establish  some  relation  between  the  world  of  ideas 
on  the  one  side  and  the  world  of  real  facts  on  the  other,  or  to 
bring  them  together  in  some  fashion  or  another.  And  it  has 
been  similarly  occupied  in  the  region  of  conduct.  Philosophy 
must  endeavour  to  do  wnth  one,  all-inclusive,  real  world,  and 
to  make  that  real  world  active  even  in  our  knowing  and  will- 
ing, yea,  even  in  our  illusions  and  wrong-doing.  Its  ghostly 
rivals  must  disappear.  They  are  nothing  but  its  process  oper- 
ating in  the  imperfect  thinking  and  willing  of  mankind. 
Nothing  exists  except  that  which  is  in  process,  and  eventhing 
that  exists  is  what  it  does. 

The  condemnation  of  the  moral  world,  in  which  piety  and 
philosophy  have  joined,  on  the  ground  that  it  is  not  the  scene 
of  moral  achievement,  is  thus  altogether  false  and  irrelevant. 
Morality  does  not  pretend  to  be  an  accomplished  and  finished 
achievement,  or  the  final  reaching  of  a  fixed  goal,  or  the  identi- 
fication of  a  static  actual  with  a  static  ideal.  The  critics 
occupy  a  wrong  point  of  view,  from  which  issue  impossible,  be- 
cause irrational,  demands.  That  which  is  in  process,  or,  in 
other  words,  that  which  is  process,  or  active  energj^  is  at  its 
goal  all  the  time  that  it  is  operative.  For  it  to  be  is  to  be 
active.  That  which  is  permanent,  and  supposed  to  be  static,  is 
that  which  expresses  itself  in,  carries  on,  and  exists  as  carrying 
on,  the  process  of  constant  change.  "The  same  yesterday, 
to-day  and  forever":  "Not  the  same  for  two  successive  in- 
stants"— both  of  these  are  true  of  physical  forces,  as  every  physi- 
cist knows.  The  rate  and  nature  of  the  change  is  the  constant 
element,  and  the  change  is  perpetually  taking  place.  Grasping 
the  law  of  this  process  he  believes  that  he  is  comprehending  the 
real  fact.  And  I  am  convinced  that  philosophers  must  assume 
an  analogous  attitude,  if  any  answer  to  their  questions  is  to  be 
reached  as  to  the  nature  either  of  morality  or  of  reality  in 
general. 

From  this  point  of  view  the  process  must  be  regarded  as  at 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  127 

the  goal  all  the  time.  That  is  to  say,  if  the  process  is  going  on, 
nothing  more  can  be  reasonably  required;  for  the  process  is  the 
operation  of  the  ideal.  And  the  ideal,  so  far  from  being  some- 
thing more  or  less  distant,  unreal,  awaiting  to  be  reached  and 
actualized,  is  present  already  as  the  ultimate  reality  which 
manifests  itself  in  the  facts  and  events.  It  follows  that  no 
moral  effort  fails.  Fulfilment  of  the  whole  law  is,  indeed,  not 
attained — an  end  which  is  not  moral — on  the  other  hand  the 
whole  process  is  a  process  of  attaining.  But  the  final  end  is 
never  aimed  at  except  as,  and  in  so  far  as,  it  is  embodied  in 
some  particular.  Morality  is  not  the  pursuit  of  an  abstract 
universal  good,  but  of  the  good  as  particularized  in  this  or  that 
duty.  Every  good  deed,  that  is  to  say,  every  rational  exercise 
of  the  will,  is  commendable  so  long  as  it  goes  on.  When  effort 
ceases,  nothing  remains  to  be  praised  or  approved.  The  attain- 
ment, as  I  have  already  said,  must  be  a  stepping  stone  and  not 
a  stopping  place. 

I  doubt  if  any  act  is  morally  good  except  in  so  far  as  it 
affects  the  character  of  the  doer,  makes  the  man  a  better  man, 
and  facilitates  similar  conduct  by  others.  Its  excellence  con- 
sists in  the  addition  it  has  made  to  the  moral  forces  of  the 
world.  Just  as  the  process  of  attaining  knowledge  develops 
the  powers  of  the  enquirer,  and  also  makes  the  same  discovery 
by  others  easier  for  them,  so  it  is  in  morality.  Newton  when 
he  wrote  his  Principia  made  the  way  to  certain  mathematical 
truths  easier  for  others.  It  takes  Japan  but  a  few  years  to 
acquire  some  at  least  of  the  elements  of  the  civilization  which 
it  has  cost  western  countries  centuries  to  achieve.  The  civiliza- 
tion of  the  past  is  the  starting  point  of  the  present,  even  al- 
though life  always  begins  at  the  beginning.  There  is  not  one 
lost  good.  Morality  is  a  continuous  development  of  mankind's 
will  to  good.  It  is  a  growing  process:  the  highest  ideal  break- 
ing out  into  a  succession  of  different  manifestations  as  mankind 
moves  from  stage  to  stage. 

It  is  the  common  characteristic  of  all  the  theories  which  we 
are  now  considering  that  they  separate  the  two  aspects  of  spir- 
itaal  life,  and  substantiate  these  aspects  in  their  isolation.     If 


128  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

the  ideal  is  regarded  as  real,  the  attitude  of  the  spirit  is  relig- 
ious and  super-moral.  If  the  ideal  is  considered  to  await 
attainment,  the  attitude  is  moral  and  apt  to  be  irreligious  or 
merely  secular.  And  inasmuch  as  it  is  assumed  that  the  ideal 
must  be  either  real  or  unreal,  there  is  no  way  of  avoiding  the 
option  between  the  religious  and  the  moral  life.  How  both 
can  be  possible  remains  unexplained  and  a  mystery  incapable 
of  explanation  from  this  point  of  view. 

This  attitude  is  constantly  rebuked  by  facts.  It  is  more  than 
evident  that  a  religion  which  does  not  issue  in  a  moral  life  is  in 
some  way  unsatisfactory;  and  it  is  not  difficult  to  show  that 
morality  is  an  uninspired  strain  and  hopeless  effort  if  its  "not- 
yet"  is  to  be  continued  forever,  and  the  postponement  of  the 
ideal  is  endless.  The  truth  is  that  such  thinkers  are  not  deal- 
ing with  facts,  but  with  abstract  aspects  of  them.  There  never 
was  a  living,  that  is,  a  real  religion,  which  did  not  break  out 
into  some  kind  of  behaviour,  and  manifest  itself,  were  it  even 
in  mere  ceremonialism.  A  living  religion  cannot  make  its  per- 
manent dwelling-place  in  the  air.  Religion,  in  the  end,  is  a 
way  of  life,  and  life  is  perpetual  intercourse  with  temporary 
circumstance.  Nor  was  there  ever  living  morality  not  inspired 
by  an  ideal,  or  a  moral  life  not  in  pursuit  of  what  was  held 
to  be  an  absolute  and  final  good. 

Morality,  as  ordinarily  understood,  is  called  Moralitdt  by 
Hegel.  He  distinguishes  it  from  what  he  calls  Sittlichkeitj  and 
the  distinction,  taken  in  its  fundamental  sense,  turns  upon  the 
external  and  mutually  exclusive  character  of  the  relations  in 
the  first  case,  and  their  interpenetration,  mutual  saturation  in 
the  second.  From  the  standpoint  of  Moralitat,  which  Hegel 
condemns,  you  have  on  the  one  side  the  ideal,  the  eternal,  the 
real,  the  final  good,  the  universal,  perfect  unconditional  law, 
approachable  but  never  attainable;  and,  on  the  other  side  you 
have  the  imperfect,  purely  secular,  ephemeral,  phenomenal, 
conditional  good,  a  series  of  particular  deeds  every  one  of  them 
tainted  by  desire,  constituting  a  scene  of  failure.  Not  only 
are  the  elements  of  the  moral  life  thus  separated  and  thereby 
made  unreal,  but  moralitj'  itself  is  separated  from  religion,  as 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  129 

the  secular  from  the  sacred,  so  that  the  latter  can  be  attained 
only  by  utterly  rejecting  the  former.  And  the  separation  ruins 
both  morality  and  religion.  The  former  is  robbed  of  every- 
thing which  could  inspire  moral  effort,  and  its  very  life  is  ex- 
tinguished; while  the  latter  becomes,  at  best,  a  ceremonial 
affair,  remote  from  all  the  concerns  of  practical  life  and  inspir- 
ing none  of  them  with  deeper  meaning  or  greater  spiritual 
worth. 

At  the  root  of  these  errors  there  lies  an  assumption  which 
is  false,  and  which  has  never  been  examined — and  a  most  com- 
mon assumption  it  is  amongst  philosophers  as  well  as  amongst 
plain  men.  It  is  the  assumption  that  the  reality  of  an  object 
depends  on  its  standing  off,  distinct  and  separate.  This  is,  at 
best,  only  a  half  truth.  It  is  less  true  than  its  direct  opposite — 
namely,  that  the  amount  and  fulness  of  the  reality  of  an  object 
depends  upon  its  not  being  separate  or  exclusive,  but  compre- 
hensive. Degrees  of  reality,  if  we  are  to  admit  them,  are 
stages  in  comprehensiveness.  The  more  real  an  object  is,  the 
less  loose  it  sits  from  the  universe ;  the  more  are  the  ways  of  its 
interdependence  upon  other  facts. 

Nowhere  is  this  truth  more  plainly  exemplified  than  in 
human  life  and  its  spiritual  enterprises.  Man  grows  as  his 
knowledge  widens,  and  as  his  interests  extend ;  that  is,  he  grows 
in  the  degree  in  which  he  goes  out  into  and  takes  possession  of 
his  world.  The  universe  of  the  little  man  is  small,  and  it  is 
very  powerless  and  niggardly.  It  helps  him  very  little,  and  it 
leaves  him  very  poor  and  impotent.  The  universe  of  the  great 
man  is  itself  great :  it  is  the  instrument  of  his  purposes  as  well 
as  the  content  of  his  intelligence;  and  its  bountifulness  knows 
no  limit.  He  is  a  greater  self  through  the  comprehensiveness 
of  his  knowledge  and  practical  purposes.  It  is  the  morally 
great  man  who  takes  upon  himself  the  burdens  of  the  world. 
The  perfect  man,  we  are  told,  lived  and  died  not  only  for  his 
neighbours  or  his  nation  or  his  age,  but  for  the  lasting  good  of 
all  mankind.  On  the  other  hand,  a  man  is  imperfect,  unde- 
veloped, small,  in  the  degree  in  which  he  shuts  himself  inside 
himself  and  treats  his  personality  as  exclusive. 


130  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

The  assumption  that  real  individuality  depends  upon  sepa- 
rateness,  after  the  manner  of  all  assumptions  which  are  at  once 
fundamental  and  false,  distorts  the  facts  and  converts  them 
into  pure  puzzles.  The  theories  which  I  have  tried  to  criticize 
do  not  deal  with  facts,  but  with  fancies  or  unrealities.  Spir- 
itual facts  present  the  elements  which  these  theories  not  only 
distinguish  but  separate,  as  already  reconciled.  No  fuller 
recognition  is  needed  or  possible  except  that  which  at  the  same 
time  enhances  the  significance  of  each  of  the  aspects.  On  this 
view,  if  I  may  refer  back,  the  ideal  is  not  over  there  while 
here  you  have  nothing  but  error  and  failure;  the  eternal  is  not 
bej^ond  while  time  is  always  a  transient  now  and  here — the 
final  good  is  not  hung  out  of  reach  in  a  superhuman  region, 
while  what  is  within  reach  of  man  and  done  by  him  is  value- 
less. You  have  not  universals  on  one  side  and  mere  particulars 
on  the  other;  nor  are  the  sacred  and  secular,  the  phenomenal 
and  real,  the  unconditional  and  conditional,  separate  facts.  If 
you  take  up  a  spiritual  fact — be  it  a  moral  act  or  a  religious 
personality — you  will  find  both  of  these  opposite  characters 
existing,  and  not  only  existing,  but  sustaining  each  other. 
There  is  no  error  where  there  is  no  ideal.  I  have  never  seen  a 
cow  which  I  would  blame  for  not  knowing  mathematics.  The 
"eternal,"  as  I  should  like  to  be  able  to  prove  later  on,  is  that 
which  puts  forth  an  endless  series  of  successive  "nows";  the 
final  good  is  the  final  cause  of  every  present  transient  good ;  and 
there  never  was  a  universal  which  did  not  lie  at  the  heart  of 
the  particular,  or  a  particular  which  was  not  the  expression 
and  realization  of  the  universal. 

In  a  word,  we  are  not  called  upon  to  form  connections  be- 
tween objects,  but  only  to  find  them,  and  we  find  them  when- 
ever we  discover  qualities.  For  qualities  are  relations.  The 
true  starting-point  of  every  effort  to  know,  however  advanced 
or  elementary  and  crude,  is  thus  the  assumption  of  system ;  that 
is  to  say,  of  a  whole  in  which  all  the  parts  are  related  and 
derive  their  characters  from  their  relations.  A  system  does  not 
consist  of  "points  plus  relations."  We  would  not  describe  any 
living  thing  in  any  such  way.    An  organism  is  not  a  collection 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  131 

of  characterless  atoms,  plus  a  no  less  alien  and  characterless  set 
of  relations;  and  spirit  is  hyper-organic,  the  unity  is  more  in- 
tense, and  the  differences  more  numerous  and  decisive.  The 
reality  of  the  parts  comes  from  their  inter-relations,  and  at 
the  same  time  the  whole  is  real  only  because  the  parts  or  ele- 
ments are  real.  It  manifests  itself  and  functions  in  every  one 
of  them;  while,  at  the  same  time,  they  are  its  actualization 
and  their  functions  are  its  nature  in  operation. 

We  are  told  usually  that  knowledge  begins  with  either  the 
bare  manifold  of  sensation,  as  Kant  said,  or  with  its  equally 
abstract  opposite,  namely,  the  bare  unity  of  an  undifferentiated 
continuum.  I  admit  that  our  knowledge,  as  first  acquired  and 
possessed,  does  not  extend  beyond  these  most  abstract  and 
empty  conditions;  but  I  would  fain  insist  that  the  datum  prof- 
fered to  us  as  an  object  of  knowledge,  that  which  offers  itself 
to  our  minds  and  is  our  co-worker  in  our  purposes  and  activi- 
ties, is  infinitely  more.  We  are  offered  in  these  respects 
nothing  less  than  the  whole  rich  universe  all  to  ourselves  as 
Carlyle  would  say.  The  possibilities  of  the  world  are  at  our 
feet.  But  that  which  we  can  make  of  this  datum,  at  the  best, 
is  relatively  very  little,  though  it  is  always  growing.  The 
world  is  infinitely  richer  in  its  meaning  and  uses  than  it  was  to 
our  savage  ancestors.  And  these  meanings  and  uses  are  grow- 
ing continually,  as  mankind  moves  on  along  the  way  of  knowl- 
edge and  right  conduct.  But  what  is  offered  to  us,  the  datum, 
the  object  of  our  knowledge  and  means  of  our  actions,  always 
consists  of  these  rudimentary  elements,  which  we  can  seize  and 
possess,  together  with  an  inexhaustible  plus.  Every  simple 
object  we  come  upon  points  us  beyond  itself.  Its  explanation  is 
always  elsewhere.  We  are  referred  to  its  cause,  or  effects,  or 
to  the  conditions  under  which  it  exists  and  operates,  and  we 
never  exhaust  its  implications.  In  a  word,  every  object  de- 
clares itself  to  be  a  part  or  element  in  a  system,  and  we  are 
referred  to  the  system  for  its  final  reality  and  truth — the  sys- 
tem, that  is,  which  is  so  far  actualized  in  man's  experience. 

In  one  sense  man's  mind,  in  the  operation  of  knowing,  is  re- 
ceptive: it  must  not  create;  it  must  only  discover.     It  must 


132  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

merely  enter  more  and  more  fully  into  the  meaning  which  is 
present  in  die  reality  from  the  first.  But  the  term  receptive 
is  most  misleading.  It  suggests  most  readily  the  view  of  Locke 
and  his  successors,  not  that  facts  are  given  us  to  know,  but 
ready-made  ideas;  that  things — facts  and  events — copy  and  re- 
peat themselves  in  the  form  of  ideas  upon  passive  minds.  Kant 
discovered  the  activity  of  mind,  as  bringing  with  it  a  complex 
apparatus  for  making  a  world  of  knowledge  out  of  the  raw 
material  of  the  manifold  of  mere  sensation.  Things,  or  at  least 
things  which  can  be  known  to  us,  must  agree  with  the  conditions 
imposed  by  mind,  and,  in  fact,  he  argued,  be  what  mind  makes 
them.  The  world  in  which  we  live  is,  when  thus  viewed, 
mind-made:  but,  unfortunately,  it  is  also,  in  consequence,  only 
phenomenal.    The  real  world  is  beyond  our  reach. 

There  is  no  hint  in  all  this  of  the  part  played  by  the  real 
world  in  the  production  of  the  world  of  appearances.  Having 
presented  us  with  its  manifold  or  its  characterless  continuum,  it 
passes  out  of  sight,  and  we  hear  nothing  more  of  it.  Kant 
never  realized  how  impotent  the  human  mind  would  be  were 
it  given  nothing  but  a  manifold.  But,  on  the  view  which  I 
would  maintain,  the  datum  of  knowledge,  the  system  of  reality 
which  is  proffered  to  us  and  in  relation  to  which  alone  we  act, 
participates  in  the  activities  of  mind.  It  incites  and  guides  at 
every  step,  and  grants  all  the  content.  It  will  be  my  business 
to  show  that  even  the  activities  of  mind  itself  are  in  the  last 
resort  simply  the  world's  working  through  the  medium  of  its 
highest  product.  Reality,  I  must  try  to  show,  declares  and 
attains  its  highest  and  best  only  in  the  medium  of  mind.  There 
and  there  only  it  acquires  and  reveals  its  ultimate  or  spiritual 
character.  Then  and  then  only  the  system  of  things  acquires 
meaning,  and  becomes  the  means  of  the  making  of  spiritual 
products.  The  datum  of  knowing  (and  willing)  is  the  system 
of  reality;  and  it  is  never  withdrawn  so  as  to  leave  man's  soul 
to  work  in  vacuo. 

On  the  other  hand,  man,  as  a  rational  being,  is  adequate  to 
his  datum:  for  he  is  potentially  not  less  comprehensive.  If  the 
world  in  the  fulness  and  variety  of  its  wealth  is  meant  to  be 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  1S3 

comprehended  by  reason  and  to  serve  rational  purposes,  the  in- 
dividual spirit,  on  its  part,  is  meant  to  comprehend  the  w^orld 
and  enter  into  possession  of  its  worth.     If  the  vi^orld  is  real 
in  the  truest  and  fullest  sense  only  in  the  degree  in  which  it 
reveals  itself  in  a  rational  medium,  man,  on  his  part,  is  real  in 
the  truest  and  fullest  sense  only  in  the  degree  in  which  he  com- 
prehends its  meaning,  its  aesthetic  perfection,  and  its  spiritual 
worth.     That  which  the  philosopher  has  to  observe,  estimate 
and  comprehend  is  the  process  in  which  the  possibilities  of  the 
self  are  being  realized.    To  do  so  he  must  follow  the  example 
of  the  fact  he  is  observing:  and  the  fact  somehow  reconciles 
opposites.    As  a  process,  or  as  a  possibility  actualizing  itself,  it 
both  exists  already,  so  that  all  that  takes  place  is  its  operations, 
and  also  it  has  to  be  brought  into  existence,  for  it  is  only  a 
possibility.     Applying  this  to  morality,  and  borrowing  the  lan- 
guage of  morality,  we  may  say  that  what  verily  is,  what  is  at 
work  now  and  here  in  the  purposes  of  mankind,  is  what  ought 
to  be.     What  ought  to  be  is  thus  the  deeper  reality.     That 
which  takes  place  is  its  working:  and  it  is  what  it  does.    What 
ought  to  be,  the  good,  is  the  living  energy  of  the  world  of 
man.     We  should   find   it   everywhere,   even   as  the  physical 
sciences  find   physical  energy  in  the  world  we  call  physical. 
And  what  ought  to  be  has  two  characters,  which   I  cannot 
afford  quite  to  pass  over:   (1)   it  must  take  the  form  of  indi- 
vidual character,   (2)    it  must  be  cumulative  and  not  merely 
repetitive.     It  must  carry  the  past  within  itself  as  it  moves, 
in  a  way  to  which  physical  energy  furnishes  no  parallel.     In 
one  word,  to  comprehend  the  real  as  the  rational  in  process,  we 
must  apply  the  idea  of  evolution  to  the  actual  doings  of  men 
and  women ;  and  this  we  cannot  do  unless  we  abandon  the  rigid 
contrasts  of  static,  exclusive  units,  related  at  best  only  exter- 
nally and  contingently,  as  is  ordinarily  assumed,  both  by  ordi- 
nary and  by  philosophic  moral  opinion. 

These  contrasts  come  before  us  in  many  different  guises, 
although  they  all  spring  from  the  same  radical  error  of  assum- 
ing that  "particulars  are  the  only  realia" ;  i.e.,  that  the  universe 
consists   of  objects  which   exist   in   isolated   independence,   to- 


134  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

gether  M'ith  external  connections  into  which  they  enter  at  one 
moment,  and  come  out  at  another  without  any  alteration  of 
character.  At  one  time  it  is  the  contrast  between  human  selves 
as  mutually  exclusive,  and  human  selves  which  are  essentially 
members  of  one  another.  At  another  time  it  is  the  contrast  be- 
tween the  attained  ideal  of  religion  and  the  ever-erring  failure 
of  the  actual  of  morality:  the  former  is  supposed  to  affirm  that 
the  ideal  is  real,  and  the  only  real,  the  latter  that  the  real  is 
most  un-ideal  and  imperfect.  At  still  another  time  we  have 
the  two  aspects  of  process  fixed  in  their  opposition — a  continu- 
ity that  never  changes,  and  the  changes  that  have  no  continuity ; 
the  contrast  between  the  merely  static  and  the  merely  changing 
or  absolutely  contingent.  Then  we  have,  still  operative,  the 
contrast  of  the  one  and  the  many,  or  of  the  universal  and  the 
particular.  And,  above  all,  we  have  the  contrast  between  the 
one  and  the  many  as  separate,  and  the  one  and  the  many  as 
united  in  a  system.  The  datum  of  knowledge  on  this  view  is 
either  a  manifold  of  sensation  or  an  undifferentiated  continuum 
standing  over  against  a  universe  conceived  as  a  rational  system. 
Reality  on  the  one  view  depends  on  separateness :  reality  on  the 
other  view  depends  upon  participation  and  comprehensiveness. 
The  good  or  bad  life  on  the  one  view  is  the  expression  of  my 
particular,  finite,  unitary,  exclusive  self :  on  the  other  view  it  is 
the  expression  of  my  world  working  in  me,  the  world  which 
being  mine  constitutes  my  individuality. 

My  main  contention  is  that,  from  the  point  of  view  which 
accepts  these  contrasts,  neither  morality,  nor  religion,  nor  their 
relation  to  each  other,  can  be  explained. 


LECTURE  XI 

THE  WORLD  OF  THE  INDIVIDUALIST 

The  main  conclusions  of  our  last  lecture  may  be  illustrated  by 
a  reference  to  Mr.  Bosanquet's  chapter  on  "The  World  of 
Claims  and  Counter-claims"  in  his  great  work  on  The  Value 
and  Destiny  of  the  Individual. 

That  his  world  of  claims  and  counter-claims  is  the  same  as 
that  which  we  described  in  our  last  lecture  needs  no  proof.  It 
is  "the  moral  world"  of  ordinary  and  philosophic  opinion,  the 
world  which  religious  men  condemn  as  worthless  because  what 
is  done  therein  does  not  issue  from  love  of  God,  because  all 
actions  done  in  it  are  imperfect  and  sin-stained.  Its  funda- 
mental characteristics,  as  we  have  already  seen,  are  the  unitary 
isolation  and  independence  of  its  constituents,  and  in  conse- 
quence the  external  and  contingent  character  of  their  relations 
to  one  another.  The  duty  that  is  commanded  and  the  claim 
that  calls  for  satisfaction  are,  both  alike,  the  personal,  private 
to  one  another.  The  duty  that  is  commanded  and  the  claim 
issue  from  a  source  that  is  alien.  The  claims  come  from  men 
who  are  "nothing  to  us,"  or  from  the  God  of  Theism  who 
made  the  world  long  ago  and  has  since  stood  aloof  from  it. 
Now  tlie  life  of  finite  man,  as  thus  conceived,  "is  essentially 
and  inherently  one  of  hazard  and  hardship,"  says  Mr.  Bosan- 
quet.  "It  is  bound  to  the  hazard  of  attempting  to  live  by  the 
command  of  a  superior,  which  is  outside  and  above  it — an  at- 
tempt which  in  the  nature  of  the  case  must  prove  a  continual 
failure.  .  .  .  It  is  bound  to  the  hardship  of  constantly  mak- 
ing  demands   for   respect   and    assistance    from   God,    nature, 

135 


136  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

and  fellow-men,  which  are  recognized,  as  it  appears,  most  ca- 
priciously and  imperfectly."  ^  "We  find  ourselves  always  fail- 
ing in  our  'duty'  (the  source  of  moral  pessimism)  and  not 
getting  our  'rights'  (pessimistic  sense  of  injustice)."'  That 
man  is  spiritually  unworthy  and  that  God  is  unjust  seem  to  be 
plain  and  inevitable  conclusions  forced  upon  us  by  our  experi- 
ence of  the  world  and  our  observation  of  the  doings  and  suffer- 
ings of  our  fellow-men.  And  the  religious  consciousness,  so 
far  from  refuting  or  repudiating  such  impious  conclusions, 
adopts  them  greedily  and  then  proceeds  to  nullify  their  signifi- 
cance. It  finds  in  man's  failure  to  do  his  duty  by  his  isolated 
strength  an  incentive  to  unite  himself  to  his  God  in  religious 
devotion ;  and  it  concludes  from  the  unequal  and  apparently 
unjust  destinies  of  men  in  this  world  that  God  will  be  just 
and  make  reparation  in  another  world  and  a  future  life. 

The  argument  is  hardly  worth  refuting.  We  do  not  trust 
our  fellow-men  to  do  justice  when  they  are  out  of  our  sight  on 
the  ground  that  so  long  as  they  were  in  our  sight  they  did 
the  opposite.  We  make  the  conduct  which  we  have  observed 
our  clue  to  the  conduct  which  we  expect.  It  is  not  a  safe  clue, 
but  it  is  the  best  we  can  have;  for  character  is  assumed  to  have 
a  certain  consistency  and  constancy.  Similarly  if  the  demands 
we  make  on  God  are  just,  and  if  they  remain  unfulfilled  by 
him  so  far  as  our  observation  reaches,  then  there  is  no  escape 
from  the  pessimistic  and  atheistic  conclusion — unless  our  ob- 
servation is  incomplete  or  otherwise  untrustworthy. 

But  this  is  precisely  the  problem  which  we  must  now  ask. 
Are  our  demands  just?  That  they  are  not  fulfilled  in  this  life 
seems  all  too  obvious.  "Our  'individual'  fortunes,"  says  Mr. 
Bosanquet,  "betray  no  approximation  to  any  single  standard  of 
individualistic  justice,  to  any  claim  for  apportionment  of  ex- 
ternal advantages  either  by  equalitj'  qua  human  beings  or  by 
any  other  standard.  .  .  .  The  spiritual  world,  as  a  world  of 
true  membership,  affords  no  encouragement  to  ideas  of  justice 
turning  on  apportionment  of  advantages  to  units  by  any  rule 

'^The  Value  and  D'cstiny  of  the  IndUidual,  pp.  131.  132. 
'Ibid.  XXV. 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  137 

whatever."  ^  And  the  good  man  insists  on  no  such  apportion- 
ment. He  does  not  desire  to  be  without  any  share  in  the  joys 
and  the  sorrows  of  others.  We  could  not  approve  of  a  world 
in  which  everybody  was  indifferent  to  everyone  else.  Nay,  even 
as  "members  of  one  another,"  it  is  no  mechanical  justice  that  is 
demanded  or  given.  "We  do  not  give  the  'best'  man  the  most 
comfort,  the  easiest  task,  or  even,  so  far  as  the  conduct  of  the 
enterprise  is  concerned,  the  highest  reward.  We  give  him 
the  greatest  responsibility,  the  severest  toil  and  hazard,  the  most 
continuous  and  exacting  toil  and  self-sacrifice."  *  The  universe 
"shatters  and  despises"  the  claim  of  individualistic  justice. 
Nor  does  it  seem  to  matter  on  behalf  of  what  kind  of  individual 
the  claim  is  made.  Even  "the  great  world  of  spiritual  mem- 
bership, to  which  really  and  in  the  end  we  belong,  takes  no 
account  at  all  of  any  such  finite  claims."  ^  The  scheme  of 
things  is  not  based  upon  justice  to  the  individual.  Unless  I 
misunderstand  Mr.  Bosanquet,  this  means  that  not  even  when 
we  recognize  the  individual's  true  nature,  as  a  member  of  a 
spiritual  system  which  comprises  him  and  his  fellows,  and  which 
lives  in  and  qualifies  them  all,  can  we  make  claims  on  his  be- 
half or  condemn  God  as  unjust  if  his  fortune  is  not  propor- 
tionate to  his  merit.  We  have  not  to  ask  whether  or  not  God 
has  been  just  in  his  dealings  with  A,  B,  or  C,  however  suffused 
they  may  be  by  their  relations  to  their  fellows  and  the  world, 
but  whether  the  universe  as  a  whole  is  justly  ruled.  "The 
proportion  of  fortune  to  merit  is  not  really  an  idea  which  has 
a  strong  hold  on  healthy  minds."  '* 

But  justice  on  the  whole  and  to  the  whole,  which  is  not 
justice  to  any  constituent  of  that  whole,  seems  to  me  unsatis- 
factory from  every  point  of  view.  There  is  no  whole  except 
that  which  exists  in  the  related  parts,  and  no  justice  can  be 
done  to  either  the  parts  or  the  whole  except  by  way  of  the 
opposite  of  each.  Such  empty  and  disembodied  universals  as 
Mr.  Bosanquet  seems  to  refer  to  do  not  and  cannot  exist. 
Least  of  all  can  they  exist  if  it  be  true  that  the  rational  indi- 

'^The  Value  and  Destiny  of  the  Individual,  pp.  152-3.  'Ibid.  p.  152. 

'Ibid.  p.  154.  ^Ibid.  p.  156. 


138  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

vidual  is  a  self-conscious  focus  of  the  universe;  or  if  the  whole 
is  a  rational  whole;  or  if  the  universe  throbs  in  his  thinking 
and  willing. 

I  am  the  more  reluctant  to  understand  Mr.  Bosanquet  in 
this  way,  because  his  vision  of  the  difference  between  the  indi- 
vidualistic world  of  claims  and  counter-claims  and  "the  world 
to  which  really  and  in  the  end  we  belong"  is  so  clear.  Nor 
would  I  do  so  were  it  not  that  Mr.  Bosanquet  has  on  other 
occasions  also  left  the  claim  of  finite  existence,  and  of  men 
and  women  as  they  stand  and  go  in  this  world  of  space  and 
time  amid  trifling  as  well  as  serious  issues,  in  an  analogous 
position.  They  are  appearances,  we  are  told.  But  what  is 
an  "appearance"?  Is  it  real,  or  is  it  a  mental  figment? — real 
like  one  of  Shakespeare's  heroines  or  a  unicorn;  real  in  one 
sense  and  not  real  in  another  sense,  both  senses  remaining  un- 
defined ;  real  to-day  and  unreal  to-morrow  when  the  Absolute 
will  swallow  it — these  things  I  have  never  been  able  to  under- 
stand. Indeed,  I  am  not  convinced  that  Mr.  Bosanquet's 
individuals  ought  to  be  intelligible,  for  according  to  him  they 
are  "contradictions."  Predication  concerning  them  is  quite 
unsafe;  for  they  fall  "within  the  great  ultimate  contradiction 
of  the  finite-infinite  nature."  ^  That  is  Mr.  Bosanquet's  last 
word  concerning  man.  He  is  finite  and  he  is  infinite,  and 
being  both,  he  is  neither  finite  nor  infinite;  for  apparently  finite 
and  infinite  contradict  each  other.  But  if  they  contradict  each 
other,  they  must  supplant  each  other;  and  they  must  owe  their 
existence  to  that  negative  function. 

Now,  I  do  not  deny  the  dual  nature  of  man ;  but  I  refuse 
to  regard  opposites  which  are  supplementary  and  positive 
aspects  of  the  same  reality  as  being  contradictory;  contradic- 
tion, as  a  last  word,  is  a  confession  of  failure.  If  the  theory 
that  ends  in  a  contradiction  rests  on  it  as  its  final  hypothesis, 
is  it  not  thereby  proved  false?  I  should  like  to  ask  what  other 
test  of  falsehood  is  possible?  It  seems  to  me  that  "the  great 
ultimate  contradiction  of  the  finite-infinite  nature"  is,  in  truth, 
a  challenge  to  the  intelligence  to  effect  the  reconciliation  which 

'The  Value  and  Destiny  of  the  Inditidual,  p.  170. 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  139 

the  fact  itself  presents.  And  the  possibility  is  suggested  that 
here,  as  elsewhere,  the  opposites  which  seemed  to  contradict 
and  therefore  supplant  each  other,  really  supplement  and  fulfil 
each  other.  Surely  the  infinite  that  stands  merely  opposed  to 
the  finite  must  be  another  finite.  The  true  infinite  must  be 
that  which  reveals  and  realizes  itself  in  the  finite.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  finite  in  which,  and  by  which,  the  infinite  is 
thus  revealed  and  realized  has  its  own  reality  in  the  infinite, 
and  exists  in  virtue  of  it.  But  such  a  process  is  impossible  where 
the  opposites  are  merely  contradictor}^  as  Mr.  Bosanquet  as- 
sumes. The  possibility  that  the  finite  is  the  infinite  in  endless 
process  of  self-realization  has,  I  think,  not  been  realized  by 
Mr.  Bosanquet.  He  assumes  that  what  is  complete,  perfect, 
must  be  static;  and  that  the  Absolute  has  this  static  perfection. 
Separated  from  that  Absolute,  the  finite  disappears,  but  the 
complementary  and  consequent  truth  that  the  infinite  cannot 
be  separated  from  the  finite  does  not  seem  to  have  held  for  him. 
Hence  to  him  the  Absolute  is  not  immanent.  It  is  not  the 
reality  that  is  revealing  itself  in  all  the  variety  and  changes 
of  finite  things,  but  an  otiose  substance  behind  the  processes. 

I  am  in  thorough  agreement  with  Mr.  Bosanquet's  descrip- 
tion of  "the  world  of  claims  and  counter-claims,"  which  is  the 
moral  world  as  ordinarily  conceived  and  the  world  of  the 
individualist.  It  is  an  "appearance,"  in  the  sense  that  it  is  a 
misrepresentation  of  the  actual  social  world  in  which  all  of  us 
alike  live  and  move  and  have  our  being.  In  other  words,  the 
world  of  the  ordinary  moralist  and  religious  man,  in  which 
every  separate  man,  as  separate,  does  his  own  right  and  wrong 
deeds,  the  world  out  of  which  God  is  shut,  or  which  he  governs 
as  an  autocrat,  and  in  which  moral  obligations  are  declarations 
of  his  will,  has  the  cardinal  aspect  of  not  being  real.  It  is  as 
much  the  creation  of  imagination  as  Prospero's  island.  It 
would  be  a  world  in  which  individual  men  and  women  are 
separate  and  distinct  and  exclusive,  and  clink  against  one  an- 
other like  seaside  pebbles.  No  one  could  owe  any  man  any- 
thing. A  man  would  fulfil  his  whole  duty  provided  he  let 
his  neighbour  alone.     But  such  is  not  the  world  in  which  we 


liO  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

live.  It  is  a  fiction  of  the  individualist.  Social  solitariness  is 
impossible.  Men  are  born  of  social  antecedents;  and  they  also 
form  and  enter  into  social  relations.  They  come  to  stand  to 
each  other  as  master  and  servant,  teacher  and  pupil,  seller  and 
buyer,  landlord  and  tenant,  man  and  wife,  parent  and  child, 
and  so  on.  The  relations  vary  as  to  their  permanence  and 
importance,  but  according  to  these  thinkers  all  alike  leave  the 
personalities,  conceived  as  the  true  selves  of  the  individuals, 
untouched.  It  cannot  be  otherwise;  for  it  is  taken  for  granted 
that  all  relations  are  external  and  contingent — pure  creations 
of  more  or  less  capricious  and  entirely  separate  wills. 

Of  course  it  cannot  be  denied  that  men  do  form  and  enter 
into  transient  relations;  and  that  many  relations  (that  all 
open-eyed  agreements)  are  the  creation  of  the  wills  of  the 
individuals  who  enter  into  the  compact.  The  blunder  lies  in 
assuming  that  all  relations  come  about  in  this  way ;  and  that 
they  make  no  difference  but  leave  the  selves  unaffected.  But 
the  root  error  is  that  of  overlooking  the  fundamental  affinities 
which  unite  men  from  the  first  and  make  later  agreements 
possible.  Men  no  more  come  out  of  their  particularity  in 
order  to  form  society  than  the  leaves  of  a  tree  come  together 
and  fix  themselves  upon  its  branches.  Society  is  in  a  sense  prior 
to  the  individual.     He  is  not  only  born  into  it,  but  born  of  it. 

I  do  not  think  it  is  necessary  to  dwell  much  on  this  truth. 
Recent  thought  has  detected  the  fanciful  and  unreal  character 
of  the  individualistic  social  schemes.  As  a  matter  of  experience 
we  have  never  met  a  Melchisedec.  All  the  men  and  women  we 
have  ever  known,  or  expect  to  know,  had  a  father  and  mother 
and  very  long  ancestry;  and  they  bore  physical  and  mental 
traces  of  their  descent  in  their  very  make  and  structure.  The 
world  into  which  they  were  born  is  one  complex  system  of 
interrelated  human  beings,  every  one  of  whom  is  structurally 
affected  in  mind,  body  and  soul  by  that  system,  and  finds  in 
the  mutual  obligations  between  himself  and  his  fellows  the 
conditions  of  living  the  life  of  a  rational  being.  We  know  now 
that  wise  men  never  did  run  wild  in  woods,  and  that  a  life 
according  to  nature,   in  Rousseau's  sense,   is  as  impossible  to 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  141 

us  as  the  return  into  the  form  of  molluscs.  Man,  in  short,  as 
Aristotle  taught  long  ago,  is  "a  social  animal." 

But  while  this  is  now  acknowledged,  the  consequences  are 
not  realized.  That  is  to  say,  the  universality  and  inevitability 
of  the  social  relations  within  which  a  man  must  live,  if  he  is 
to  become  and  to  live  the  life  of  a  rational  being,  are  not  seen 
to  be  inconsistent  with  their  contingency  and  externality.  The 
self  that  I  am  is  still  supposed  to  be  in  itself  secluded,  and 
not  in  any  relations  positive  or  negative  to  my  fellows  or  to 
the  world.  My  self  is  a  separate  thing.  I  can  peep  at  those 
relations  from  the  privacy  where  I  dwell,  and  I  can  throw  them 
off  when  I  please,  or  put  them  on  and  still  remain  the  same 
self.  There  can  be  no  relation  more  obligatory  and  binding 
than  that  which  I  call  my  duty  to  my  neighbour  or  his  duty 
to  me.  If  any  claim  or  counter-claim  is  valid,  it  is  that  of  duty. 
Nevertheless,  on  this  view,  even  our  duties  are  merely  external 
obligations.  They  are  imposed  bj^  another  being  whom  we 
usually  regard  as  "higher."  We  have  no  part  in  making  them 
binding,  and  consequently  our  obedience  to  the  command  is  not 
free,  nor  our  conduct  moral. 

But  I  shall  return  to  this  aspect  of  the  matter.  In  the 
meantime  wish  to  indicate  that  we  have  in  the  economic  world 
something  that  approaches  this  individualist's  conception  of 
society.  There  the  units  are  supposed  to  be  indifferent  to  each 
other,  and  no  one  is  under  obligations  to  any  one  else  or  can 
make  claims  upon  him,  or  in  any  way  participate  in  his  destiny 
except  economically.  Nothing  counts  in  this  social  state  of 
things  except  material  values,  and  one  man's  money,  so  far  as 
"business"  is  concerned,  is  as  good  as  another's.  Justice  in  such 
a  world  would  consist  in  equality,  and  equality  would  mean 
equal  possession  of  material  wealth.  That  is  to  say,  the  stand- 
ard by  which  desert  would  be  measured  and  claims  acknowl- 
edged would  have  no  ethical  significance  of  any  kind.  The 
human  and  spiritual  contents  of  personality  have  all  been 
spilled  out  of  the  economic  man.  They  are  not  required  and 
do  not  count.  The  workman  in  a  large  factory  or  yard  is  not 
personally  known  by  his  employer  nor  is  he  of  any  personal 


112  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

Interest  to  him.  The  employer  drops  his  name  and  calls  him 
by  a  number.  And  similarly,  on  the  other  side,  the  employer 
to  the  workman  is  a  capitalist,  more  or  less  just,  and  nothing 
else — a  money-bag  kept  rather  closely  shut. 

But  materialistic  as  we  have  become  in  these  times,  not  even 
in  Glasgow  and  its  neighbourhood  has  society  taken  an  exclu- 
sively economic  character.  Most  men  have  other  interests  as 
well.  When  the  workman  goes  home  to  his  mother  or  his  wife 
and  children,  or  when  he  joins  his  fellow-workmen  in  pursuit 
of  political  ends  or  the  purposes  of  his  union,  in  every  exchange 
of  kindliness  and  consideration  and  personal  regard,  the  crude- 
ness  of  the  economic  world  is  left  behind.  Relations  that  are 
ethical  are  found  to  exist  in  every  human  society,  even  the  low- 
est, and  these  at  the  same  time  sweeten  and  exalt  individual 
life  and  secure  social  unit}'. 

Above  all,  it  must  be  observed  that  these  more  or  less  arti- 
ficial and  superficial  economic  relations,  indeed,  economic  soci- 
ety itself,  could  not  come  into  being  except  for  the  action,  pro- 
longed through  many  centuries,  of  relations  that  are  either 
consciously  or  unconsciously  moral.  After  all,  economic  rela- 
tions imply  a  mutual  trust  amongst  men,  and  a  stability  of  will 
and  purpose  which  are  beyond  their  reach  so  long  as  they  are 
uncivilized. 

Our  conclusion,  then,  as  to  the  purely  fictitious  character  of 
the  individualistic  world  agrees  with  Mr.  Bosanquet's.  No 
such  society  ever  did  nor  can  exist. 

Why,  then,  I  must  ask,  pass  judgment  on  such  a  figment 
and  call  it  either  just  or  unjust,  good  or  bad,  in  any  sense?  It 
is  not  worthy  even  of  condemnation.  It  would  seem  to  me 
that  to  make  claims  on  behalf  of  a  detected  fiction,  the  pure 
creation  of  incorrect  thinking,  is  absurd.  And  such  a  fiction 
the  individual  member  of  this  society  is.  To  call  God  unjust 
because  there  exists  no  constant  proportion  between  the  deserts 
and  the  destiny  of  the  social  atoms  of  an  individualistic,  and 
therefore  impossible,  community  is  absurd.  Having  discovered 
and  exposed  the  error,  the  philosophers  ought  to  let  it  lie.  It 
is  not   a   matter   that   can   concern   anyone  whose   interest   is 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  143 

wholly  in  the  real  and  the  true.  If  he  finds  it  "the  general  fact 
that  when  we  regard  each  other  as  finite  units  in  a  world  of 
externality,  we  tend  to  frame  schemes  of  apportionment  accord- 
ing to  which,  by  some  rule  or  other,  each  separate  unitary  being 
has  some  claim  to  a  separate  unitary  allotment  of  happiness  or 
opportunity  or  reward — of  something  which  should  be  added 
to  him,  it  seems  to  us,  by  God  or  man,  or  nature  or  fortune,"  ^ 
he  surely  can  have  nothing  to  do  with  such  schemes,  known  to 
be  pure  fiction,  a  thing  in  the  clouds.  Such  schemes  ought  to 
interest  no  one.  If  no  such  beings  as  the  individualist  conceives 
are  to  be  found,  how  can  they  be  treated  either  justly  or  un- 
justly? There  is  no  ground  for  pessimism  in  their  unheeded 
claims.  Nor,  it  seems  to  me,  can  the  existence  of  such  beings 
be  desired.  Verily,  the  world  of  claims  would  be  a  hard  world 
— it  would  be  a  world  where  no  mother  cared  for  her  child, 
or  child  for  its  mother,  and  no  one  shared  another's  joys  or 
sorrows — a  world  without  sympathy  and  without  love — de- 
prived of  all  the  deeper  spiritual  supports  both  of  morality  and 
religion. 

It  is  not  man's  doom  to  live  in  such  a  world.  The  world 
in  which  he  does  live  is  an  incomparably  better  one;  at  the  low- 
est it  has  spiritual  possibilities  and  human  features. 

I  have  said  that  the  individualist's  world  can  have  no  moral 
character  of  any  kind.  In  the  first  place,  as  already  indicated, 
the  claims  and  counter-claims  are  external  in  character.  Even 
a  divine  commandment,  in  so  far  as  it  is  external,  can  have  no 
moral  value.  It  does  not  obtain  free  obedience.  So  long  as 
the  claim  is  not  imposed,  or  re-imposed,  by  the  agent  upon  him- 
self, his  acknowledgment  of  it  has  no  ethical  value.  In  the 
next  place,  it  would  seem  to  me  that,  except  personal  fear  or 
gain,  that  is,  except  some  directly  self-regarding  motive  be  in 
operation,  neither  claims  nor  counter-claims  could  be  recog- 
nized. "Why  should  I  be  moral?"  or  rather  "How  can  I  be 
moral?"  unless  moral  imperatives  appear  to  me  to  be  the  de- 
mands of  what  is  Best.  The  moral  good  must  have  objective 
value.    Duty  becomes  a  moral  obligation  only  when  it  ceases  to 

^The  Value  and  Destiny  of  the  Individual,  pp.  145-6. 


lii  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

matter  who  has  made  the  demand,  provided  the  agent  endorses 
it:  the  demand  itself  must  be  just. 

It  would  thus  seem  to  me  that  a  world  of  individualistic 
claims  and  counter-claims  lacks  all  that  can  make  the  claims 
and  counter-claims  binding,  or  even  operative  at  all.  The  con- 
stituents of  such  a  world,  as  \lr.  Bosanquet  suggests,  would 
hold  one  another  at  arm's  length ;  or  they  would  seek  solitude. 
And  most  certainly  no  progressive  or  spiritual  impulse  would 
be  present.  That  impulse  comes  when  the  fulfilment  of  duty 
is  recognized  in  both  its  aspects;  when  it  seems  to  be  at  the 
same  moment  the  realization  of  what  is  objectively  best  and 
the  attainment  of  one's  own  true  good.  For  man  is  not  doing 
what  is  wrong  in  seeking  his  own  well-being.  His  error  springs 
from  conceiving  and  seeking  a  personal  well-being  which  is  not 
at  the  same  time  a  universal  objective  good.  Every  action  has 
its  own  personal  and  even  subjective  and  private  aspect:  will- 
ing what  is  right  or  wrong  is  always  a  lonely  matter.  But 
the  exclusive  features  of  it  are  in  the  background.  They  form 
no  part  of  the  motive  and,  in  fact,  do  not  count.  For  the  good 
man  is  good  just  because  he  has  given  his  self  away,  dedicated 
it,  and  saved  it  by  the  dedication.  It  is,  after  the  act,  a  better 
"self"  than  it  ever  was  before.  Its  life  is  more  full  and  it 
moves  on  a  higher  level. 

Now,  this  means  to  me,  in  one  word,  the  reconciliation  of 
morality  and  religion,  for  moralit>^  becomes  the  active  operation 
of  the  Best,  that  is,  the  religious  life.  But  this  also  means  a 
victory  over  the  contradiction  of  the  finite  and  infinite  aspects 
of  man's  nature.  It  not  only  affirms  the  immanence  of  God 
in  the  volitions  of  men,  but  shows  the  grounds  of  its  possibility. 
The  ultimate  ethical  force  which  the  individual  individuates^ 
that  is,  turns  into  elements  of  his  own  personality,  is  God's. 
Just  in  the  same  way  the  physical  force  which  man  exerts  and 
spends  is  that  of  his  world. 

Mr.  Bosanquet  ought  therefore  to  have  nothing  to  do  with 
a  world  of  exclusive  wills,  or  with  an  Absolute  which  stands 
over  against  the  finite  and  in  contradiction  to  it.  It  is  "be- 
yond," "impossible,"  and  so  on,  and  should  be  left  to  Herbert 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  145 

Spencer,  The  infinite  that  we  do  know  and  have  a  right  to 
call  just  or  unjust,  is  the  power  which  manifests  itself  in  the 
events  of  the  world,  natural  and  spiritual,  in  which  we  live. 
That  infinite  is  a  process  which  never  rests.  Like  all  else  it  is 
what  it  does ;  and  to  know  what  it  is  we  must  consider  its 
works.  If  man  will  but  lift  his  eyes  he  will  find  that  the  Uni- 
verse is  the  daily  and  constant  revelation  of  this  ultimate  real- 
ity, and  that  the  reality  which  it  reveals  is  spiritual. 

My  contention,  then,  is  that  Mr.  Bosanquet's  Absolute  is  no 
less  a  fiction  than  the  world  of  claims  and  counter-claims, 
whose  existence  he  rejects.  In  it  the  finite  is  either  lost,  or 
transmuted  beyond  recognition.  The  process  of  constant 
change,  which  on  such  a  view  the  finite  appears  to  be,  is  law- 
less and  chaotic  enough  to  satisfy  the  wildest  Pragmatism.  But 
we  have  no  reliable  evidence  of  uncaused  happenings.  Every 
event  points  back  to  conditions  out  of  which  it  has  arisen,  and 
if  we  observe  it,  we  shall  find  it  gives  rise  to,  or  rather  takes 
the  form  of,  still  other  conditions.  This  means  that  what  is 
changing  is  something  that  is  also  constant.  The  detachment 
of  events  is  only  one  aspect  of  them;  or  more  truly,  this  one 
aspect,  closely  observed,  will  prove  to  be  the  reality  itself  in 
process.  But  Mr,  Bosanquet  keeps  these  two  characters  asun- 
der. The  events  of  our  life  stand  for  Mr.  Bosanquet  "in  a 
temporal  series"  over  against  the  fixity  of  what  is  eternal ;  and 
"the  ultimate  triumph,"  that  is,  of  the  good,  can  take  place 
only  "in  the  Absolute."  "The  total  expression  of  it  within  the 
temporal  series  is  inconceivable."  ^  And  3'et  it  would  appear 
that  the  things  of  time  express  the  Absolute.  "One  thing  seems 
to  me  certain,"  he  says.  "The  expression  of  the  Absolute 
cannot  be  wholly  reserved  for  the  future.  The  past  have 
had  its  share.  What  else  can  it  have  been  than  such  an 
expression?  And  something  is  certainly  dropped  as  we  pro- 
ceed, by  the  nature  of  finiteness,  though  it  is  open  to  any 
one  to  argue  that  what  is  added  must  be  of  greater  value."  ' 
From  this  it  would  appear  that  Mr.  Bosanquet's  Absolute 
contains  something  that  the  finite  cannot  hold;  and,   on  the 

^The    Value  and  Destiny   of   the   Individual,   p.   326.  -Ibid,  p.  313. 


146  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

other  hand,  there  seems  to  be  something  in  finite  facts  which 
has  to  be  left  behind  as  "not  capable  of  Salvation."  They  are 
"dropped,"  and  never  recovered.  The  infinite  is  not  the  whole, 
and  the  Absolute  is  not  all-inclusive.  Mr.  Bosanquet's  doctrine 
on  this  matter  is  somewhat  ambiguous,  but  his  last  pronounce- 
ment and  final  one  seems  to  afKrm  the  essential  separateness  of 
the  finite  and  infinite,  or  the  relative  and  absolute.  And  yet 
they  are  not  so  separate  as  to  be  incapable  of  clashing.  "The 
finite-infinite  creature"  is  "always  in  a  condition  of  self-trans- 
cendence. .  .  .  He  is  always  endeavouring  to  pass  beyond 
himself  in  achievement.  .  .  .  He  is  always  a  fragmentary  be- 
ing, inspired  by  an  infinite  whole,  which  he  is  forever  striving 
to  express  in  terms  of  his  limited  range  of  externality.  In  this, 
ex  hypothesis  he  can  never  succeed.  But  this  effort  of  his  is  not 
wasted  or  futile.  It  is  a  factor  of  the  self-maintenance  of  the 
Universe ;  it  constitutes  ...  an  element  in  the  Absolute."  * 
What  more  do  you  require,  the  reader  may  ask,  in  the  way 
of  bringing  the  infinite  and  finite  together  in  the  nature  of 
man?  I  reply  that  for  "self-transcendence"  I  would  write 
"self-realization"  or  "self-attainment."  Instead  of  saying  that 
man  is  always  endeavouring  to  "pass  beyond  himself,"  I  would 
say  that  he  is  endeavouring  to  reach  or  become  himself.  I  can- 
not admit  that  man  is  a  fore-doomed  failure:  that  were  too 
cruel  an  invention  for  any  Creator.  Instead  of  affirming  that 
in  his  ethical  actions  he  is  always  failing,  I  would  say  that  he 
is  always  succeeding — even  when  he  "learns  through  evil  that 
good  is  best."  And  I  would  add  that  the  gain  of  the  Universe 
consists  in  the  increased  value  of  the  individual  selves  which  are 
evolved;  and  would  refuse  to  regard  man,  the  self-conscious 
and  therefore  infinite  individual,  as  a  mere  element,  even  in  the 
Absolute.  What  reaches  over  its  other  is  more  than  an  "ele- 
ment." All  through  Mr.  Bosanquet's  argument  the  supposi- 
tion runs  that  man's  real  nature  is  finite.  He  has  to  pass 
"beyond"  himself  in  order  to  achieve  the  infinite — an  obvious 
impossibility.  The  consequence  is  that,  if  and  when  man  does 
pass  beyond  himself    (and   he   is  lifted   above  himself  by   his 

^Ibid.  p.  304. 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  147 

religion),  man's  self  disappears.  Mr.  Bosanquet  speaks  of  the 
"absorption  of  the  self  by  will  and  conviction  in  the  perfection 
which  inspires  it  and  belongs  to  it" ;  ^  as  if  in  becoming  real 
the  self  ceased  to  be,  or  at  least  to  be  itself. 

At  this  point  the  difference  of  view  becomes  clear  and  sig- 
nificant. Man  has  not  to  go  beyond  himself  in  order  to  reach 
the  infinite.  Nor  does  he  need  to  be  transmuted  in  order  to 
become  an  item  in  the  Absolute.  He  is  the  infinite  in  process. 
A  mere  finite  could  not  aspire  or  in  any  way  seek  to  go  beyond 
itself,  any  more  than  ac  ow  can  be  moral.  Man  can  seek  to 
become  only  that  which  he  potentially  is:  and  what  a  man  is 
potentially  he  is  most  truly — only  we  must  permit  what  is 
potential  to  reveal  itself  in  the  process  of  becoming.  To  be  a 
rational  self  means  to  be  self-determined,  and  what  is  self- 
determined  is  at  once  both  infinite  and  absolute.  Nothing  is 
alien  to  it.  It  is  in  its  nature  all-inclusive.  This  fundamental 
characteristic  belongs  to  the  narrowest  and  most  ignorant  and 
least  virtuous  self  we  can  conceive,  so  long  as  it  is  held  to  be 
sane  and  rational,  capable  of  doing  either  what  is  right  or  what 
is  wrong  and  therefore  free.  It  is  in  him  to  "acquire,"  and 
what  he  is  capable  of  becoming  is  that  which  he  most  truly  is. 

When  I  read  man's  history,  therefore,  what  I  find  is  not  a 
finite  creature  trying  to  transcend  himself  and  necessarily  fail- 
ing, but  a  potency  that  is  infinite  in  its  nature,  operating  as  a 
spiritual  being  at  a  certain  stage  of  its  actuality,  and  in  response 
to  certain  circumstances.  If  either  side  of  the  human  self  had 
to  be  called  unreal,  or  deceptive,  I  should  call  it  his  finite,  fixed, 
exclusive  side.  But  the  conception  of  the  finite  as  the  self- 
revealing  and  self-realizing  process  of  what  is  in  its  nature 
absolute  and  infinite,  averts  the  need  of  fixed  and  static  entities, 
and  avoids  the  difficulties  which  spring  therefrom. 

Hence,  to  me,  every  step  in  spiritual  well-doing  is  at  once 
the  actual  attainment  of  the  Best,  the  realization,  as  demanded 
and  made  possible  by  the  circumstances  of  the  moment,  of  a 
good  that  is  moral  and  therefore  Absolute,  and  also  it  is  the 
building  up  of  the  individual  as  an  individual.     He  means  more, 

'^The  Value  and  Destiny  of  the  Individual,  p.  306.  Vide  also  Mr.  Bradley's 
Appearance  and  Reality. 


148  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

and  is  more,  and  has  more  worth,  after  the  deed,  than  before. 
"The  Absolute  is  all-inclusive  by  transmutation,"  says  Mr. 
Bosanquet,  "and  is  thus  no  mere  aggregate,"  '  but  the  trans- 
mutation is  supposed  to  be  confined  to  its  finite  content.  The 
Absolute  cannot  change.  What  is  perfect  must  remain  fixed  in 
order  to  be  real — a  pure  assumption  if  the  conflict  of  good  and 
evil  is  admitted.  Such  a  view  which  rules  out  real  perfection, 
rules  out  the  whole  content  and  inspiration  of  progress.  It 
suggests  to  Mr.  Bosanquet  an  ever-receding  goal,  which  verily 
is  not  inspiring.  That  it  could  be  a  succession  of  achievements 
has  not  appeared  probable  to  him.  "There  is  no  Interpreter's 
House  or  Palace  Beautiful"  on  the  way,  for  Mr.  Bosanquet's 
Pilgrim,  where  he  can  be  refitted  and  refreshed  and  sent  forth 
singing.  Mr.  Bosanquet  in  a  word  "objects  to  the  conception 
of  change  in  the  ultimate  real."  '  The  Absolute  stands  aloof, 
after  all,  from  the  world  of  finite  happenings,  of  which,  by  the 
by,  this  world  is  crammed  full.  It  does  not  express  itself  in 
the  changes.  It  is  not  that  which  does  emit  the  changes;  it  is 
not  a  perfection  which  never  rests  or  ceases  to  throw  out  its 
rays.  It  is  a  dead  Absolute,  like  the  static  substance  of  Spinoza. 
The  living  turmoil  is  all  elsewhere.  The  relation  between 
finite  and  infinite,  the  relative  and  the  absolute,  God  and  the 
world,  is  in  the  end  negative,  exclusive,  contradictory.  The 
moral  world  is  the  world  in  which  every  man  tries  to  go  be- 
yond himself,  and,  of  course,  fails.  Failure  attends  the  efforts 
of  him  who  has,  no  less  than  of  him  who  has  not,  identified  his 
will  with  that  of  God,  ratified,  adopted,  loved  his  commands 
and  found  in  his  service  perfect  freedom;  for  he  has  had  to 
leave  his  self  out  and  become  something  or  somebody  else.  As  a 
moral  being  in  this  world  he  does  not  do  justice,  and  he  does 
not  receive  justice,  in  any  full  sense.  There  is  no  such  actual 
achievement  anv-where.  In  all  hands,  at  the  best,  there  is  only 
a  striving  after  "a  beyond."  Man  is  doomed  to  carry  with 
his  consciousness  of  "I  ought"  and  "I  would"  the  conviction  of 
"I  cannot."  As  a  moral  being  he  must  not  expect  to  perform 
an  act  which  can  satisfy  his  sense  of  what  is  right.     If,  being 

^Tlie    Value   and   Destiny   of  the   Individual,   p.    307.  -Ibid.  p.  30R. 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  149 

religious,  he  is  satisfied,  it  is  because  his  self  has  been  trans- 
cended. Religion  is  God's  presence  and  action  in  him,  and,  be 
it  noted,  not  a  man's  own  action  also;  for  these  two  are 
exclusive. 

Contradiction  is  thus,  for  Mr.  Bosanquet,  the  ultimate  word 
regarding  this  world  of  time  and  tears.  It  is  a  contradiction 
between  two  things,  each  of  which  is  fixed.  It  is  therefore  not 
soluble.  It  can  only  be  removed  by  treating  either  the  one  or 
the  other  of  the  opposites  as  unreal.  And  this  is  what  he  does. 
In  this  life  it  is  the  infinite  or  absolute  or  perfect  which  is  un- 
real. In  the  next  it  is  the  finite  that  has  to  disappear  or,  what 
comes  to  the  same  thing,  to  be  transmuted.  This  world,  the 
world  in  which  we  live  and  which  we  help  to  make,  the  moral 
world,  is  the  sphere  of  the  unavailing  effort  to  reach  a  solution, 
and  the  scene  of  a  double  failure.  It  is  a  world  in  which  man 
is  condemned  to  failure,  and  in  which  God  is  not  called  upon 
to  be  just,  except  "on  the  whole."  The  next  world  is  the  scene 
of  such  transmutation  that  nothing  is  any  longer  recognizable. 

So  far  as  I  can  see,  such  fixed  opposites  as  Mr.  Bosanquet 
employs  are  not  capable  of  yielding  any  satisfying  result. 

I  reserve  for  our  next  lecture  the  defence  of  a  less  despairing 
view. 


LECTURE  XII 

THE  WORLD  OF  THE   IDEALIST 

The  substance  of  the  view,  which  I  would  demonstrate  by 
irrefragable  proof  if  I  could,  is  suggested  by  Wordsworth  in 
the  opening  words  of  the  Ninth  Book  of  The  Excursion. 

"To  every  Form  of  being  is  assigned, 
An  active  Principle: — hovve'er   removed 
From  sense   and  observation,   it  subsists 
In  all  things,  in  all  natures;   in  the  stars 
Of   azure   heaven,    the    unenduring   clouds. 
In  flower  and  tree,  in  every  pebbly  stone 
That  paves   the   brooks,   the   stationary   rocks. 
The  moving  waters,  and  the  invisible  air. 
Unfolded   still  the   more,   more  visible. 
The  more  we  know;  and  yet  is  reverenced  least. 
And  least  respected  in  the  human  Mind, 
Its  most  apparent  home." 

I  have  quoted  Wordsworth  because  we  accept  optimistic 
utterances  from  the  poets  more  readily  than  from  philosophers; 
and  we  are  less  ready  to  charge  them  with  taking  a  shallow 
view  of  life  and  treating  evil  too  lightly.  Moreover,  if  I  have 
not  misapprehended  the  whole  mission  of  modern  Idealism,  I 
should  say  that  it  is  to  give  a  reasoned  and  definite  expression  to 
this  poetic  faith  and  to  justify  it  in  the  face  of  the  facts  of  life 
— justify  it,  that  is  to  say,  to  the  understanding  of  men  who 
will  neither  reduce  the  reality  of  these  facts  by  calling  them 
appearances  nor  proceed  by  a  method  which  selects  convenient 
and  favourable  facts  and  passes  all  others  by.  Idealism  re- 
ceived  its   inspiration   from   Wordsworth    and    Coleridge   and 

160 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  151 

their  fellow-poets,  no  less  than  it  received  its  specific  problem 
from  Kant.  Kant  introduced  what  he  called  the  Copernican 
change  by  giving  the  necessities  of  spirit  logical  priority  over 
those  of  sense  and  natural  facts.  But  the  change  which  he 
introduced  carries  far  more  consequences  than  he  foresaw,  or, 
indeed,  than  have  even  yet  been  realized,  whether  in  the 
theories  or  in  the  practice  of  mankind.  It  implies  not  only  that 
religion  and  morality,  and  all  the  rights  and  privileges  of  a 
nature  that  is  rational,  can  be  placed  beyond  the  reach  of  the 
engines  of  scepticism,  safe  from  all  attack,  but  have  to  be  re-in- 
terpreted and  to  take  a  wider  meaning.  In  the  last  resort,  for 
Kant,  the  interests  of  man  are  moral ;  the  truth  is  to  be  known 
for  the  sake  of  the  good ;  the  knowable  universe  exists  in  order 
to  furnish  a  fit  frame  for  the  moral  life ;  and  the  ultimate  neces- 
sity for  the  existence  of  God  lies  in  the  demand  for  the  realiza- 
tion of  a  complete  good.  But  the  moral  life  for  Kant  is  ulti- 
mately intensely  individualistic.  Every  man  is  set  to  seek  his 
own  perfection.  The  pursuit  is  solitary.  He  stands  alone, 
with  no  strength  save  his  own,  under  the  thunder  of  the  cate- 
gorical imperative.  And  his  strength  is  sufficient.  "He  can, 
because  he  ought,"  although  he  is  never  complete  victor  over  his 
own  desires,  and  requires  infinite  time.  If,  in  one  sense,  he 
may  be  held  to  be  an  ephemeral  phenomenon  amongst  pheno- 
mena, in  another  the  whole  natural  scheme  is  a  thing  lighter 
than  vanity  in  the  presence  of  his  spirit.  And  if  he  has  inter- 
course with  his  fellows  in  society,  it  is  that  of  a  king  with 
kings.'' 

But  all  this  Kantian  teaching  had  to  be  changed  in  being 
adopted.  The  individual  had  to  suffer  at  least  temporary  de- 
thronement. Psychology  was  to  cease  to  play  the  role  of  meta- 
physics; man  had  to  be  derived  and  to  appear  as  mediated  by 
the  natural  scheme.  Morality  had  to  be  both  naturalized  and 
socialized:  it  must  cease  to  be  either  an  exception  or  an  antag- 
onist to  the  scheme  of  things,  and  lose  its  defiant  character. 
Moral  goodness,  which  is  the  becoming  morally  good,  must 
itself  be  a  process  of  the  real.    The  movement  must  be  seen  as 

^Kant's  doctrine  in  this  matter   was  inconsistent. 


152  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

the  very  best  thing  that  could  take  place,  and  as  that  in  which 
the  world  of  the  real  reveals  its  true  character  and  reaches  its 
full  fruition.  Hence,  religion  too  must  attain  a  new  character. 
It  must  derive  its  value  not  from  the  failure  of  morality,  but 
from  its  success:  it  must  be  recognized  as  that  which  inspires 
morality,  being  the  sense  of  infinite  companionship — "If  God 
be  for  us,  who  can  be  against  us?" 

Now  this  change,  though  it  involves  the  whole  outlook  of 
philosophy,  morality  and  religion,  comes  in  the  last  resort  to 
one  thing  only:  man,  as  an  individual,  instead  of  being  the 
centre  around  which  the  Universe  revolves,  is  now  caught  up 
in  its  career.  But  the  Universe  itself  is  spiritual,  relative  to 
mind  and,  therefore,  to  man  in  every  item.  It  verily  is  a 
Copernican  change,  a  new  spiritual  astronomy  destined  to  make 
many  beliefs  obsolete,  and  to  be  received  reluctantly.  Man  is 
man,  on  this  view,  in  virtue  of  his  kinship  with  the  world ;  not 
because  his  self  is  private,  but  for  the  very  opposite  reason. 

But  it  is  difficult  for  man  to  give  up,  or  even  to  postpone, 
his  self  in  any  department.  He  seems  to  stand  naturally  at  the 
centre  of  things:  East  and  West,  and  North  and  South  seem 
inevitably  to  begin  where  he  is,  and  the  zenith  is  always  imme- 
diately above  his  head.  The  difficulty  is  especially  great  if  the 
promise  that  he  w^ill  receive  his  self  back  enriched  is  uncertain 
and  given  in  indefinite  language.  And  that  the  promise  has, 
thus  far,  not  been  free  from  these  defects  is  hard  to  deny;  for 
the  votaries  of  this  way  of  thinking  are  not  seldom  given  to 
accentuate  the  negative  side  of  the  process  of  morality,  and  to 
make  much  of  its  contradictions,  and  pains,  and  perils;  while 
the  Absolute,  in  which  is  the  ultimate  truth  and  reality  of 
things,  is  apt  to  be  an  empty  maw,  where  finite  things  are 
transmuted.  This  is  the  substance  of  our  criticism  of  Mr. 
Bosanquet.  He  over-accentuates  the  merely  negative  side  of 
morality  and  emphasizes  its  hazards  and  hardships.  Man's 
self  is  "a  finite  being  which  is  infinite  without  realizing  it,  and 
so  .  .  .  is  always  bej'ond  itself."  "It  is  this  double  being 
which  necessitates  the  atmosphere  of  hazard  and  hardship 
which  surrounds  the  finite  self  when  it  tries  to  take  itself  as 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  163 

such."  '  If  it  could  "take  itself"  as  more  than  finite,  if  it  could 
realize  its  infinitude  by  completely  identifying  itself  with  the 
perfect,  thinking  no  imperfect  thoughts,  seeking  no  imperfect 
good,  doing  no  deed  in  an  imperfect  way,  then  all  would  be 
well.  But  to  do  this  the  finite  being  would  be  obliged  to  pass 
beyond  itself,  that  is,  I  presume,  it  would  have  to  leave  its  self 
behind  and  become  something  or  somebody  else — which  is 
plainly  impossible. 

This,  I  think,  is  not  merely  contradiction  but  confusion.  In 
the  face  of  it  one  is  disposed  to  ask  some  plain  questions,  and 
to  make  some  plain  statements.  Presumably  man's  life  would 
have  as  little  "hazard"  or  "hardship"  as  the  animal's,  if  he  had 
no  moral  aspirations,  that  is  to  say,  if  the  aim  of  his  being  were 
not  the  attainment  of  the  perfect,  which  means  the  doing  of 
what  is  morally  right.  Expunge  his  higher  nature  and  there 
would  remain,  not  a  being  acquainted  with  hazards  and  hard- 
ships, but  a  contented  animal  chewing  its  cud.  Presumably, 
on  the  other  hand,  "hazard  and  hardship"  would  not  fitly  char- 
acterize a  life  which  actually  attained  the  perfect. 

It  is  no  longer  necessary  to  discuss  the  first  of  these  two 
alternatives.  However  close  the  kinship  between  men  and  ani- 
mals, we  are  not  disposed  to  overlook  the  fact  that,  somehow 
or  another,  the  process  of  evolution  culminates  in  converting 
man's  natural  needs  into  spiritual  ideals  freely  sought.  The 
second  alternative  remains,  I  think,  even  for  Mr.  Bosanquet 
himself,  provided  he  keeps  running  the  hazards  and  facing  the 
hardships.  He  has  detected  the  unreality  of  the  "world  of 
claims  and  counter-claims."  Bad  as  our  world  is,  in  many 
ways,  it  is  not  so  hopelessly  bad  as  that — not  even  the  economic 
part  of  it. 

What  world  is  real,  then?  Or  how  are  we  to  characterize 
truly  what  we  falsely  viewed  as  a  world  of  claims  and  counter- 
claims? Evidently  as  a  world  in  which  morality  is  re-inter- 
preted in  the  light  of  religion ;  and  in  which  man  is  recognized 
as  having  claims  and  fulfilling  them  (or  as  a  being  with  rights 
and  duties)  because  he  is  already  in  the  service  of  the  Best.    His 

^The   Value  and  Destiny  of  the  Individual,  p.   132. 


154  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

rights  are  conclusive  and  his  claims  are  sound  only  because  the 
good  actually  is  at  their  back ;  and  his  duties  are  binding  for  the 
same  reason.  But  this  is  nothing  more  nor  less  than  to  attrib- 
ute both  the  demands  that  men  make  upon  one  another  and 
upon  their  God,  and  the  mutual  service  they  render  each  other 
in  this  world  of  space  and  time,  to  the  activity  of  vi'hat  is  Per- 
fect. The  world  of  human  intercourse,  of  mutual  help  and 
hindrance,  the  ordinary  social  or  moral  world,  we  thus  trace 
first  to  the  volitions  of  men.  It  is  their  continued  volitions 
that  keep  it  in  existence.  Let  man  cease  to  will,  and  the  moral 
world,  as  known  to  us,  disappears.  And  if  we  take  up  the  voli- 
tions of  men,  we  shall  find  (not  seldom  under  deep  obscura- 
tion) that  nothing  could  call  them  into  being  except  a  vision  of 
a  good  end — nay,  of  the  best — or  what  he  conceives  to  be  the 
Best,  though  it  may  not  by  any  means  be  regarded  by  him  as 
morally  best.  That  vision  incites  the  will,  receives  the  assent 
of  the  head  and  heart,  and  becomes  the  object  of  a  choice  which 
is  free.  If  we  want  further  to  trace  his  right  or  wrong  inter- 
pretations of  what  is  best,  we  shall  have  a  long  road  to  travel. 
We  must  bring  in  all  that  went  to  the  making  of  his  disposi- 
tion, all  his  past  history.  But  we  should  not  have  to  go  be- 
yond his  personality,  for  all  these  things  are  gathered  into  him, 
and  the  choice  in  the  end  is  his  own.  But  his  world  has  co- 
operated. If  you  are  asked  who  did  this  deed,  you  must  answer 
in  the  same  way  as  you  would  answer  a  question  regarding 
physical  movement.  Whose  forces  are  employed  when  I  walk? 
Are  they  mine  and  not  the  physical  world's,  or  the  world's  and 
not  mine?  We  can  deny  the  part  therein  neither  of  the  indi- 
vidual nor  of  the  physical  world. 

Why  should  we  judge  spiritual  facts  otherwise,  and  con- 
clude that  an  action  must  cease  to  be  mine,  if  I  am  to  regard 
it  as  inspired  by  my  religious  attitude  and  the  result  of  "God's 
working  in  me"?  The  reason  is  that  spiritual  deeds  are,  as 
already  observed,  more  obviously  private,  individual;  and  that 
we  overlook  the  fact  that  they  are  the  result  of  the  individua- 
tion of  common  elements.  The  spiritual  as  compared  with  the 
natural  universe  is  a  closer  unity,  for  the  members  enter  into 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  155 

each  other's  life  and  fate ;  and  yet  the  unity  is  made  up  of  more 
independent  elements.  The  intensely  individual  character  of 
moral  responsibility  cannot  be  compromised.  Man  does  what 
is  right  or  what  is  wrong  as  if  he  were  the  sole  living  being  in 
the  Universe.  His  action  is  the  result  of  his  own  interpreta- 
tion of  his  self  and  its  needs,  and  of  that  which  can  satisfy. 
His  antecedents  and  his  environment  are  not  forces  operating 
upon  him.  They  are  elements  of  his  concrete  self.  His  indi- 
viduality has  absorbed,  incorporated  them,  and  they  are  active 
only  because  they  are  elements  in  his  personality  and  are  there- 
fore participant  in  his  volitions.  The  difference  that  separated 
the  self  and  the  not-self  is  overcome  through  the  inclusion  or 
absorption  of  the  latter  in  the  former.  It  is  the  nature  of  the 
rational  self  to  negate  the  strangeness  of  the  not-self  and  to  de- 
prive it  of  its  alien  character.  All  that  is  spiritual  must  be 
individual.  Human  life,  on  this  view,  is  a  process  in  which 
what  appears  at  first  glance  to  be  finite  and  exclusive,  is  found 
to  be  infinite.  That  which  actually  works  as  rational  life  is 
that  which  has  no  fixed  limits.  It  is  engaged  in  overpassing 
them ;  that  is  to  say,  in  showing  that  they  are  not  limits.  Man 
is  the  infinite  in  the  process  of  demonstrating  his  infinitude. 

Hence,  so  far  from  transcending  himself  through  the  activi- 
ties of  his  life,  he  is  becoming  himself.  The  human  world  is, 
to  me,  a  moral  w^orld  in  the  making.  In  the  last  resort  nothing, 
or  nothing  of  consequence,  takes  place  except  that  men  here  are 
slowly  learning  goodness.  This  is  the  same  thing  as  to  say 
that  what  is  operative  everywhere  in,  and  through  and  as,  the 
wills  of  men  is  the  infinite  goodness  of  God — human  history  is 
"God's  working,"  as  we  say.  The  process  is  both  moral  and 
religious,  both  human  and  divine,  both  finite  and  infinite.  So 
intimately  are  these  related,  so  truly  are  they  inseparable  aspects 
of  one  whole,  that  the  moment  we  do  separate  them  each  be- 
comes an  abstract  nonentity  and  unintelligible.  The  aspira- 
tions of  the  finite,  the  moral  movement  of  the  world,  becomes 
impossible.  Not  even  the  effort  can  take  place.  There  were 
for  man  nothing  but  pure  stagnancy  if  the  ideals  of  reason  did 
not  translate  his  natural  desires.    And,  on  the  other  hand,  the 


156  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

infinite  or  absolute  would  be  distant,  "beyond,"  out  of  touch 
with  finitude.  The  finite  could  not  reach  it  without  "going 
beyond  itself" — a  feat  it  cannot  perform.  These  are  the  con- 
clusions to  which  Mr.  Bosanquet  is  driven,  and  so  long  as  the 
distinction  between  the  finite  and  infinite  is  regarded  as  the 
opposition  of  contradictory  facts,  they  are  not  avoidable. 

What  he  regards  as  contradictory  I  would  represent  as  com- 
plementary. The  opposites,  if  we  so  call  them,  maintain  and 
exist  and  act  in  virtue  of  each  other.  The  infinite  reveals 
and  realizes  itself  in  the  finite;  and  the  finite  is  real  and  not 
an  appearance.  It  is  a  final  and  ultimate  real,  retaining  its 
individuality  through  all  changes,  because  and  in  so  far  as  it  is 
the  operation  of  the  whole.  The  whole,  on  its  part,  is  the 
infinite  articulated  and,  in  man,  individuated.  But  can  this 
view  be  proved?  Does  not  such  a  faith  carry  with  it  conse- 
quences which  are  obviously  inadmissible?  The  advantages  of 
reconciling  the  sacred  and  the  secular,  religion  and  morality, 
the  claims  of  the  spiritual  and  of  the  natural  self,  and  of  find- 
ing in  what  is  perfect  the  impulse  that  moves  the  universe  on 
its  course  would  be  to  establish  a  priceless  confidence,  and  bring 
that  Peace  of  which  the  greatest  optimist  the  world  ever  saw 
is  said  to  have  spoken.  But  even  that  optimism  is  too  dearly 
bought  if  bought  at  the  expense  of  either  denying  imperfection 
and  reducing  evil  into  a  temporary  appearance,  or,  on  the  other 
hand,  of  making  God  participate  in  the  evil  doings  of  men  and 
responsible  for  the  inequalities  under  which  they  live  and  the 
injustice  they  suffer. 

The  answer  which,  as  we  saw,  has  been  ofTered  is  that  we 
are  not  concerned  with  the  destiny  of  the  individual,  but  with 
the  character  of  the  scheme  of  things  as  a  whole.  We  rejected 
this  answer  in  a  summary  fashion.  The  parts  we  thought  must 
inevitably  share  the  character  of  the  whole,  and,  in  justice, 
ought  also  to  share  its  destiny.  And  this  is  true  above  all  of 
a  system  which  is  spiritual,  and  which  is  focussed  more  or  less 
fully  in  every  individual  member  of  it. 

But  there  is  another  sense  in  which  we  are  not  called  upon 
to  justify  God's  dealing  with  the  individual,  or  to  maintain  a 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  157 

religious  faith  except  in  view  of  the  scheme  as  a  whole.  We 
are  not  called  upon  to  perform  a  task  which  exceeds  our  capaci- 
ties; and  it  does  exceed  the  capacity  of  man,  who  is  only  in 
process  of  realizing  his  infinitude,  finally  to  prove  or  disprove 
anything  concerning  the  individual.  That  can  be  done  only 
when  knowledge  is  complete;  and  complete  knowledge  of  the 
individual,  that  is,  of  the  concrete  individual  who  alone  is  real, 
implies  complete  knowledge  of  his  relations  to  the  universe 
which  give  him  the  elements  of  his  personality.  To  pass  judg- 
ment on  a  man's  action  we  must  know  the  man;  indeed,  know 
everything  in  him  or  about  him  which  either  palliated  or  aggra- 
vated his  act — his  circumstances,  his  history,  his  parentage,  his 
disposition,  his  tastes,  instincts,  and  all  the  advantages  and  dis- 
abilities under  which  he  lives.  But  such  exhaustive  knowledge 
is  evidently  beyond  our  power  to  attain.  Our  statements  must 
therefore  be  general  and  applicable  only  on  the  whole;  for  the 
consequences  of  an  omission  of  any  item  were  to  render  our 
verdict  insecure  and  possibly  unjust. 

Evidently,  under  such  circumstances  we  should  not  pass  any 
judgment  on  our  fellows.  But  that  is  not  practicable,  and  in 
this,  as  in  other  matters,  we  must  do  the  best  we  can.  To  live 
together,  we  must  form  estimates  of  one  another.  Social  life 
implies  different  degrees  of  mutual  reliance.  As  a  rule,  we  pass 
moral  judgments;  but  not  always,  by  any  means.  Indeed, 
nothing  is  more  vague  or  uncertain  than  the  standard  of  values 
which  men  employ,  and  no  vital  matter  has  received  less  con- 
sideration. In  our  ordinary  life  of  more  or  less  useful  mutual 
service,  which  human  society  is,  the  problems  we  have  prac- 
tically to  solve  are  problems  of  priority.  That  is  to  say,  in 
order  to  play  our  part  as  members  of  the  social  system,  we  must 
judge,  not  so  much  between  the  decisive  opposites,  good  and 
evil,  as  between  the  good  and  the  better,  or  between  the  bad  and 
the  worse.  Plain  opposites  do  not  often  present  themselves. 
The  questions  we  decide  are  questions  of  degree,  and  of  what 
is,  or  is  not,  opportune. 

But  the  religious  attitude  is  different.  There  our  judgments 
must  be  comprehensive  and  final,   and   our  approval   or   dis- 


168  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

approval  is  in  nowise  limited.  It  applies  to  the  whole  man,  and 
it  is  a  pronouncement  upon  his  spiritual,  i.e.  his  true  and  ulti- 
mate, worth  or  worthlessness.  All  judgments  inspired  by  the 
religious  point  of  view  have  this  comprehensive  and  final  char- 
acter. All  is  right  or  all  is  wrong.  If  "God's  in  his  heaven, 
all's  right  with  the  world."  If  there  be  no  God,  or  if  he  lacks 
either  power  or  goodness,  then  nothing  is  right.  The  religious 
man's  experience  of  the  world  may  be  limited,  his  observation 
of  man's  life  may  have  been  external  and  superficial,  but  if  his 
enquiry  concerns  the  existence  and  character  of  God,  and  is 
made  in  the  interest  and  from  the  point  of  view  of  religion, 
the  conclusion  at  which  he  arrives  is  an  affirmation  or  a  denial 
of  the  validity  of  a  faith  which  is  all-inclusive  and  final.  But 
his  judgments,  whether  valid  or  not,  are  insecure.  Their 
truth  has  not  been  demonstrated.  He  has  drawn  a  conclusion 
which  is  universal  in  its  character  from  premisses  which  are 
particular  and  incomplete. 

From  this  point  of  view  I  am  in  entire  agreement  with  Mr. 
Bosanquet  that  we  cannot  justify  a  scheme  that  equalizes,  on 
any  principles,  the  destiny  and  the  deserts  of  individuals. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  as  to  the  evidence  which  is  offered  by  the 
world  in  which  we  live.  Taken  as  simply  "given,"  or  at  its 
face  value,  it  favours  scepticism.  The  circumstances  of  the 
life  of  good  individuals  do  not  furnish  grounds  for  believing 
that  a  loving  God  has  them  in  his  special  care.  What  such 
observation  presents  to  our  view  is  a  world  apparently  left  to 
itself.  And  if  we  observe  the  ways  of  men  from  the  purely 
secular  point  of  view,  and  without  admitting  the  truth  of  the 
presuppositions  of  a  religious  faith,  the  best  we  can  see  is  a 
moral  struggle.  And,  from  this  point  of  view,  the  moral 
struggle  is  not  merely  full  of  hazards  and  hardships,  but  trag- 
ical to  the  last  degree;  for  it  is  the  hopeless  struggle  of  finite 
beings  to  "transcend  themselves."  And  what  worse  can  there 
be  than  the  necessary  failure  of  the  pursuit  of  the  best? 
Whether  the  world  is  not  better  "left  to  itself,"  and  whether 
the  moral  struggle  is  the  attempt  of  men  to  transcend  or  to 
reach  themselves,  are  further  questions.    These  we  postpone  for 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  159 

the  moment.  But  one  thing  must  be  clearly  recognized :  if  we 
cannot  approve,  neither  can  we  condemn,  the  actual  world 
from  mere  observation  of  the  particulars  of  the  lives  of  indi- 
viduals. If  the  religious  conclusion  is  insecure,  the  opposite  is 
in  nowise  better  founded.  We  can,  in  fact,  convict  scepticism 
of  the  omission  of  a  ruling  factor.  It  overlooks  the  fact  that 
external  circumstances  owe  the  value  that  they  have  to  the  use 
which  is  made  of  them.  Their  value  is  not  intrinsic,  as  is  the 
value  of  moral  facts.  Whether  a  man's  poverty,  or  ill-health, 
or  misfortunes  are  his  loss  or  gain,  we  cannot  know  except  by 
relating  them  to  his  life  and  its  aims.  And  what  is  true  of  indi- 
dividual  men  is  true  of  the  whole  scheme.  It,  too,  must  be 
set  in  its  spiritual  context  if  we  would  find  its  final  value. 
Should  it  happen  that  the  present  world,  abandoned  to  itself  as 
it  seems  to  be,  and  full  of  inequalities — wealth,  health,  the 
respect  of  men,  and  every  form  of  prosperity,  and  their  oppo- 
sites,  distributed  without  any  reference  to  the  deserts  of  men — 
should  it  happen  that  it  furnishes  to  mankind  as  a  whole  the 
best  opportunity  for  learning  goodness,  then  the  sceptical  con- 
demnation of  it  and  the  denial  of  the  existence  and  perfection 
of  God  are  wrong.  But  they  are  wrong  only  if  a  still  further 
condition  is  fulfilled.  They  are  wrong  if  the  process  of  learn- 
ing to  do  what  is  right,  or,  in  the  language  of  religion,  if  "the 
service  of  God"  has  itself  a  worth  which  is  neither  conditional 
nor  limited. 

It  would  appear,  then,  that  we  are  as  little  entitled  to  justify 
or  condemn  the  scheme  of  things  as  a  whole  as  we  are  to  jus- 
tify or  condemn  its  details.  Neither  side  to  this  controversy 
has  a  right  to  draw  universal  inferences  from  particular  data, 
and  the  affirmation  or  denial  of  the  existence  of  God  is  such  a 
universal.  This  was  suggested  by  Kant,  so  far  as  he  denies 
our  right  to  conclude  anything  but  a  finite  Creator  from  a  finite 
world.  But  we  can  go  further.  The  particulars  of  human 
experience,  even  if  we  could  exhaust  their  meaning,  would  not 
furnish  grounds  for  theological  deductions.  In  their  logical 
applications  the  particulars  are  not  premisses  so  much  as  tests. 
We  do  not  draw  from  our  observation  of  the  world,  or  of  the 


160  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

ways  and  destiny  of  men,  our  conception  of  either  the  being  or 
the  character  of  God:  we  try  to  discover  whether  facts  do  or 
do  not  justify  our  religious  belief  or  unbelief.  In  short,  we 
employ  the  same  method  as  the  scientific  man  does  in  his  en- 
quiries. He  does  not  go  to  the  facts  he  wishes  to  understand 
with  an  open-mouth  and  an  empty-mind,  nor  wait  in  the  lab- 
oratory on  anything  that  may  happen.  He  is  endeavouring  to 
discover  whether  facts  corroborate,  that  is,  exemplify,  some 
presupposition  or  hypothesis  which  he  brings  with  him. 
Strictly  speaking,  inference  from  particulars  can  yield,  not 
explanatory  principles,  but  generalizations.  Newton  might, 
though  most  unsafely,  have  inferred  from  the  fall  of  one  apple 
that  other  apples  would  also  fall  under  similar  circumstances. 
But  the  idea  which  explained  the  fall,  the  conception  of  the 
active  principle  which  produced  the  fall,  he  had  to  bring  with 
him.  We  may  call  this  power  of  anticipating  the  meaning  of 
facts  imagination  or  intuition,  and  make  it  seem  miraculous  and 
inexplicable.  My  view,  as  I  have  already  indicated,  is  that  our 
intuitions  and  hypothetical  preconceptions  have  their  origin, 
like  other  ideas,  in  our  experience.  In  any  case  we  employ 
them  in  all  our  enquiries.  And  in  so  far  as  our  conception  of 
the  being  and  of  the  character  of  God — the  religious  or  scepti- 
cal attitude,  in  which  we  approach  the  world  and  the  doings  of 
men  in  order  to  observe  them — in  so  far  as  this  is  not  merely 
traditional,  we  owe  it  not  so  much  to  external  observation  as 
to  reflection  upon  our  own  inner  experience — upon  our  nature, 
our  needs,  our  yearnings,  our  disappointments  and  satisfaction. 
We  discover  our  need  of  God  when  we  come  to  our  selves. 
The  evidence  must  be  spiritual  if  our  conclusion  is  the  accept- 
ance or  rejection  of  a  religious  faith.  In  this  controversy,  or 
enquiry,  only  spiritual  values  can  count.  If  the  scheme  of 
things  is  such  as  to  maintain  these,  then  all  is  well ;  if  not,  then 
all  is  wrong. 

Does  the  scheme  of  things,  then,  justify  religious  faith,  even 
when  we  judge  of  it  only  as  a  whole,  and  make  use  of  no  stand- 
ard of  measurement  except  that  which  is  strictly  spiritual? 
This  is  the  question  we  have  now  to  face.     I  would  recall  to 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  161 

your  minds  the  limits  within  which  our  answer  is  offered :  first, 
that,  with  Mr.  Bosanquet,  we  judge  only  of  the  scheme  as  a 
whole  (I  am  not  saying  on  the  whole)  ;  and,  secondly,  that  the 
conclusion  is  made  to  rest  and  religious  faith  accepted  or  re- 
jected on  spiritual  grounds.  As  to  the  first  of  these  two 
conditions,  I  think  it  has  been  made  plain  that  we  speak  of  the 
scheme  as  a  whole,  and  not  of  its  particulars,  not  because  we 
admit  that  the  benevolent  will  of  God  may  not  be  operative 
in  the  latter,  but  because  we  cannot  know  them  through  and 
through,  and,  therefore,  cannot  draw  from  our  observation 
of  them  any  conclusion  either  religious  or  sceptical.  My  atti- 
tude in  this  differs  radically  from  that  of  Mr.  Bosanquet,  who 
does  not  merely  suspend  judgment,  but  considers  that  the  evi- 
dence of  the  divine  benevolence  is  to  be  found  only  in  the 
scheme  as  a  whole. 

The  second  point — the  employment  of  purely  spiritual 
standards  in  the  matter  of  religious  belief  or  unbelief — needs 
some  explanation.  It  means  that  in  this  enquiry  we  really  ask 
and  try  to  answer  only  one  question.  Do  the  moral  laws — the 
laws  which  demand  justice  between  man  and  man,  and  man  and 
God,  and  not  only  justice  but  "love,"  and  every  other  principle 
of  spiritual  excellence — do  these  hold  in  our  world  ?  Is  the  rela- 
tion of  deed  and  result,  or  antecedent  and  consequent,  reliable, 
universal,  necessary,  as  we  consider  it  to  be  in  the  natural 
world?  Or  are  there  any  instances  in  which  the  doing  of  a 
good  action  leaves  the  doer  a  worse  man  ?  Expressed  in  a  more 
general  way,  has  right-doing  ever  been  known  to  inflict  moral 
loss,  or  wrong-doing  to  bring  moral  gain?  One  such  case 
would  be  as  destructive  of  religious  faith  and  as  justly  negate 
the  existence,  power  and  goodness  of  God,  and  the  effective 
operation  of  his  will,  as  one  instance  of  the  failure  of  natural 
law  would  be  a  conclusive  negation  of  that  law.  But  two  con- 
ditions must  be  fulfilled  before  the  sceptic  could  draw  his 
negative  conclusion.  He  must  not  only  have  failed  to  trace 
the  operation  of  the  spiritual  law,  but  he  must  have  succeeded 
in  tracing  its  failure.  The  first  case  would  only  justify  suspen- 
sion of  judgment:   scepticism,  in  order  to  deny,  must  prove  the 


162  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

second.  The  second  condition  must  be  the  exclusion  of  all 
considerations  which  are  not  directly  moral  or  spiritual.  It  is 
not  for  a  moment  to  be  denied  that  as  tilings  are,  and  have  been 
in  the  past,  and  will  be  till  that  distant  future  comes  when 
social  life  attains  a  high  degree  of  perfection,  men,  by  doing 
what  is  right,  have  brought  and  will  bring  tragic  misfortune 
upon  themselves  and  upon  those  who  depend  on  them.  This, 
indeed,  is  the  most  frequent  theme  of  tragedy.  The  reflective 
scrupulousness  of  Hamlet,  the  intensity  of  Othello's  love  for 
Desdemona,  the  headlong  trustfulness  of  Lear — in  short,  the 
apparent  failure  of  some  form  of  good  is  at  the  heart  of 
every  great  tragedy.  If  it  be  true  that,  in  the  long  run, 
natural  well-being  follows  moral  good  conduct,  it  is  not  true  so 
far  as  the  history  of  mankind  has  proceeded  that  "all  these 
things  are  added"  to  those  who  "seek  first  the  kingdom  of  God 
and  his  righteousness."  Spiritual  excellence  and  material  pros- 
perity— good  health,  wealth,  social  esteem  and  so  on — seem  to  be 
related  to  each  other  by  no  law  of  any  kind.  If  the  demand  for 
such  a  sequence  be  right,  then  the  sceptic's  case  is,  so  far,  to  all 
appearance,  in  process  of  being  proved  by  man's  experience. 

But  on  the  assumption  that  spiritual  excellence  is  supreme 
excellence,  that  moral  or  spiritual  good  is  the  only  final  and 
absolute  good — good  in  its  own  right  and  good  whatever  else 
occurs — and  that  all  material  things  derive  their  value,  positive 
or  negative,  from  this  final  good,  according  as  they  contribute 
to  it  or  hinder  it — on  that  assumption  the  demand  that  "good 
men  should  have  a  good  time,"  and  that  pain,  suffering,  loss, 
sorrow,  should  be  concentrated  on  bad  men,  would  be  irrelevant 
and  even  wrong.  The  religious  spirit  has  no  difficulties  over 
this  question.  It  finds  no  insuperable  obstacle  to  counting  "all 
things  but  loss  for  the  excellency  of  the  knowledge  of  Christ 
Jesus,"  It  says  with  Paul,  I  "do  count  them  but  dung  that 
I  may  win  Christ."  And  there  are  considerations  which  go 
far  to  show  that  its  conviction  is  valid. 

In  the  first  place,  there  are  very  many  undeniable  instances 
of  the  conversion  by  the  spiritual-minded  man  of  all  manner 
of  apparently  unfavourable  circumstances  into  means  of  further 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  163 

religious  progress.  External  circumstances  of  all  kinds  have 
been  made  into  opportunities  for  learning  goodness;  and  there 
are  hardly  any  limits  to  the  power  of  character  over  circum- 
stance. The  praise  of  God  has  arisen,  at  times,  from  strange 
conditions — given  a  love  of  the  Highest  that  fills  the  soul,  it 
will  find  fuel  in  everything  and  break  into  the  brighter  flame 
for  pain,  poverty  and  other  natural  ills. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  secondary  and  derivative  and  condi- 
tional character  of  natural  goods  is  in  constant  process  of  being 
demonstrated.  The  most  miserable  men,  the  blankest  failures, 
the  lives  which  become  most  weary  of  themselves,  the  men 
whose  career  has  all  along  its  course  had  low  value  and  ends 
in  defeat,  are,  I  believe,  as  a  rule,  "the  men  of  pleasure." 

From  both  sides  the  same  conclusion  is  pressed  upon  us,  if 
we  are  at  all  fair-minded.  The  experience  of  the  former,  and 
especially  their  "peace"  of  soul  and  happiness,  indicate  that 
they  have  been  making  the  right  use  of  the  external  circum- 
stances of  life.  That  of  the  second  is  a  frank  confession  that 
the  circumstances  have  been  misused.  And,  for  my  part,  I  have 
never  heard  the  verdict  of  either  withdrawn.  And  the  right 
use  of  a  thing  always  implies  a  right  understanding  of  its 
nature.  Those  who  make  the  best  use  of  the  changes  and 
chances  of  the  present  life  must  thus  have  rightly  interpreted 
their  purpose;  those  who  have  made  a  wrong,  foolish,  disap- 
pointing use  have  wrongly  interpreted  them.  I  do  not  see  how 
this  conclusion  can  be  avoided ;  nor  the  value  of  the  testimony, 
coming  as  it  does  from  both  sides,  be  denied.  It  seems  that  the 
natural  world  is  the  instrument  of  a  spiritual  end. 

In  the  next  place,  the  very  existence  of  moral  good  must 
imply  its  supremacy.  It  cannot  be  means  to  anything  above  or^ 
beyond  itself.  To  use  what  is  moral  as  means  is  to  destroy 
its  moral  character.  To  be  good  in  order  to  "get  on,"  either 
here  or  hereafter,  is  not  a  precept  that  the  moral  consciousness 
can  enforce.  The  final  value  of  spiritual  excellence  is  so  obvi- 
ous that  I  need  not  dwell  upon  it.  What  remains  is  this — 
that  in  this  world  of  ours,  confused  as  it  often  seems,  lawless 
and  abandoned,  there  is  in  operation  a  force  making  for  ends 


164  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

whose  value  is  unconditional.  We  may  say  that  its  victory  has 
not  arrived  as  yet,  but  I  do  not  think  that  we  can  deny  that 
it  is  in  process.  The  history  of  the  world  in  the  past  may 
possibly  be  regarded  as  giving  ambiguous  evidence  of  the  pres- 
ence of  the  Best.  One  is  not  always  able  to  be  certain  that 
"the  world  is  becoming  better."  Nevertheless,  it  seems  to  me 
that  the  intrinsic  nature  of  the  moral  process  makes  it  in  itself 
a  triumph;  or,  in  other  words,  that  while  both  good  and  bad 
are  real,  and  both  a  process,  the  former  is  a  process  of  growth 
and  of  attainment,  the  latter  a  process  of  self-refutation  and 
deletion. 

I  may  conclude  the  present  lecture  by  summarizing  our 
results. 

Firstly :  The  particular  events  and  experiences  of  individual 
lives  cannot  furnish  to  us  the  grounds  for  concluding  either  the 
truth  or  falsity  of  religious  faith.  These  furnish  not  premisses 
but  tests. 

Secondly :  We  approach  the  facts  of  life  with  a  preconcep- 
tion, favourable  or  unfavourable,  of  the  existence  and  nature 
of  God,  which  is  the  result,  not  so  much  of  external  observa- 
tion, as  of  reflection  upon  our  own  nature  and  needs. 

Thirdly :  Hence  our  religious  faith  or  scepticism  has  the 
same  ultimate  use  and  character  as  a  scientific  hypothesis,  and 
its  validity  must  be  tested  in  the  same  way. 

Fourthly:  The  test  must  be  spiritual,  for  the  conception 
whose  truth  we  wish  to  prove  or  disprove  is  spiritual. 

Fifthly:  No  other  test  is  final;  no  values  other  than  spir- 
itual values  are  unconditional. 

Sixthly:  Subjected  to  such  a  test,  the  world  in  which  we 
live  appears  to  have  one  supreme  purpose;  that  is,  to  furnish 
mankind  with  the  opportunity  for  learning  goodness. 

Lastly:  The  confessions  of  the  religious  spirit  and  of  the 
pleasure-loving,  corroborate  each  other  in  that  the  former  has 
rightly  interpreted  and  rightly  used  the  natural  circumstances 
of  life  while  the  latter  has  done  the  opposite. 

The  moral  victory  is  in  process,  and  the  nature  alike  of  moral 
good  and  of  moral  evil  is  such  as  to  make  it  secure. 


LECTURE  XIII 

THE  STANDARD  OF  VALUE 

If  the  old  doctrine  that  nature  is  in  antagonism  to  spirit,  and 
that  man's  natural  desires  are  sinful,  is  now  seen  to  verge  on 
blasphemy,  the  opposite  doctrine  which  finds  favour  at  present 
may  well  seem  preposterous.  We  can  tolerate  and  even  enjoy 
the  view  that  all  men  seek  the  best  and,  as  Browning  says, 
have 

"All  with  a  touch  of  nobleness,  despite 
Their  error,  upward  tending  all  though  weak — 
Like  plants  in  mines  which  never  saw  the  sun, 
But  dream  of  him,  and  guess  where  he  may  be, 
And  do  their  best  to  climb  and  get  to  him." 

That  view  is  offered  as  a  poetic  vision.  But  as  a  sober  doc- 
trine, the  result  of  the  unprejudiced  observation  of  the  facts  of 
human  life,  it  will  seem  to  many  to  be  totally  indefensible, 
even  although  no  criterion  is  employed  except  that  which  is 
moral  or  spiritual.  It  will  be  admitted  that  the  law  which 
connects  antecedent  and  consequent  within  the  moral  region 
may  be  as  invariable  as  it  is  within  the  physical  world.  I 
believe  it  will  be  admitted  also  that  the  circumstances  of  life 
are  rightly  understood  by  those  who  build  up  a  good  charac- 
ter in  dealing  with  them,  and  both  misunderstood  and  misused 
by  those  who  turn  them  into  opportunities  for  doing  what 
is  wrong.  And  if  this  is  true,  it  must  follow  that  the  natural 
scheme  is  not  impartial,  but  favours  morality,  and  is,  in  truth, 
its  instrument. 

But  both  of  these  admissions,  even  when  taken  together,  fall 
short  of  justifying  a  faith  that  can  satisfy  the  religious  spirit. 

165 


166  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

For  that  faith  affirms  the  omnipresence  of  the  divine  benevo- 
lence, which  means  that  it  is  present  at  the  heart  of  the  most 
unsound  lives  as  well  as  of  the  best.  Its  operation  is  in  every 
individual  life,  however  great  its  squalor.  The  difficulty  of 
believing  in  the  universality  of  Divine  Love  is  very  great  to 
many.  Not  only  the  cases  of  individuals,  but  certain  general 
features  of  modern  life  seem  to  make  such  a  faith  untenable. 
It  is  difficult  to  become  familiar  with  the  slums  of  our  big 
cities  without  being  convinced  that  there  are  many  thousands 
who  neither  in  themselves  nor  in  their  environment  give  evi- 
dence of  any  such  divine  operation,  or  have  any  stimulus  to 
virtue  of  any  kind.  Children  are  born  into  the  world  bringing 
with  them  inherited  diseases  or  physical  and  mental  feebleness: 
they  are  the  descendants  of  men  and  women  who  never  made 
any  pretence  to  either  physical  or  character  cleanliness,  and 
they  are  brought  up  in  a  social  environment  in  which  moral 
judgment  is  hopelessly  perverted.  As  they  grow  up,  the  vicious 
and  criminal  life  seems  as  natural  to  them,  and  even  as  re- 
spectable, as  his  apprenticeship  to  a  trade  is  to  a  working  man's 
boy.  And  it  is  a  life  much  more  full  of  adventure — a  constant 
game  of  wits  between  them  and  the  police. 

Is  it  not  better  to  say  at  once  that  for  such  persons  the  oppor- 
tunities of  a  good  life  do  not  exist?  If  a  benevolent  power  is 
operative  elsewhere  in  the  world,  is  it  not  plain  that  it  has 
overlooked  the  claims  of  such  persons  as  these?  What  can 
justify  the  world  as  a  school  of  virtue  in  their  case?  The  readi- 
est answer  and  the  answer  most  frequently  given  is — "Nothing 
justifies  it.  It  had  been  better  had  they  never  been  born." 
What  answer  can  we  make?  What  answer  must  we  make  if 
we  are  not  to  give  up  that  trust  in  the  Love  and  Power  of 
God  which,  we  admit,  cannot  be  limited  without  virtually 
being  denied? 

( 1 )  I  would  fain  make  precisely  the  same  answer  as  a 
scientific  man  makes  when  he  fails  to  trace,  in  particular  in- 
stances, the  operation  of  the  universal  and  necessary  laws  of 
which  he  speaks.  As  we  have  already  seen,  the  physicist  does 
not  profess  to  give  an  account  of  the  magnitude  and  direction 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  167 

of  all  the  forces  operative  in  the  ordinary  physical  changes, 
such  as  those  which  occur  amongst  the  clouds  or  falling  forest 
leaves.  It  is  in  his  laboratory,  after  excluding  all  manner  of 
irrelevances  and  thereby  setting  up  an  artificial  case,  that  he 
actually  traces  the  operation  of  the  material  law.  His  affirma- 
tion of  the  working  of  the  law  in  other  cases,  and  the  world's 
acceptance  of  his  affirmation,  are  matters  of  trust  or  faith. 
Judgment  is  not  suspended  though  the  evidence  has  not  been 
given.  It  is  confidently  affirmative  of  the  law,  although  the 
law  has  not  been  actually  traced.  And  no  one  demurs.  The 
scientist  knows  that  to  fail  to  trace  the  law  is  one  thing  and 
to  deny  its  existence  is  another.    "Not  proven  is  not  disproved." 

So  far  as  I  can  see,  the  religious  man  can  justly  make  a 
strictly  analogous  claim  in  the  case  of  the  slum  child.  Nay, 
if  I  rightly  judge,  he  must  make  it;  for,  as  we  have  seen,  the 
full  knowledge  of  the  particular  is  not  possible,  least  of  all  the 
knowledge  of  all  that  has  gone  to  the  making  and  upbringing 
of  such  an  infinitely  complex  phenomenon  as  a  slum  child. 
And  the  sceptic  ought  to  accede  to  the  claim,  and  recognize 
that  his  only  logical  right  in  the  case  is  the  right  to  suspend 
judgment.  Instead  of  doing  so,  he  usually  rushes  to  his  con- 
clusion, and  denies  either  the  existence  of  God  or  his  benevolent 
interest  in  human  affairs. 

(2)  The  negative  conclusion  from  individual  instances  is 
generally  as  hasty  and  ill-informed  as  it  is  illogical.  Is  it 
quite  certain,  for  instance,  that  the  conception  usually  formed 
of  these  slum  children  is  even  proximately  correct?  Or  are 
we  not  prone  to  demand  from  them  the  same  kind  of  behaviour 
as  from  other  more  fortunate  children?  To  do  so  were  as 
unjust  as  it  is  natural.  I  can  conceive  skill  in  lying  and  decep- 
tion, courage  and  resource  in  housebreaking,  ingenuity  in  mis- 
leading and  eluding  the  police,  bringing  social  respect  to  their 
owner,  and  being  regarded,  in  such  a  social  environment, 
simply  as  virtues.  Everything  depends  upon  the  criterion  by 
reference  to  which  approval  is  given  or  refused;  and  men  em- 
ploy the  most  various  and  inconstant  and  sometimes  absurd 
criteria.     As  a  rule,  the  standard  of  values  is  not  considered 


168  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

at  all  by  those  who  pass  judgment  and  approve  or  condemn 
the  action  of  either  God  or  man.  Like  the  friends  of  Job, 
we  either  mingle  at  random  moral  and  natural  considerations, 
or  expect  physical  prosperity  as  a  consequence  of  an  antecedent 
that  is  moral.  Least  of  all  does  the  unbeliever  in  his  condemna- 
tion of  God  on  the  ground  of  the  prosperity  of  the  wicked  or 
the  calamities  of  the  virtuous  recognize  that  all  non-ethical 
values  are  purely  conditional.  Indeed,  this  is  much  too  rarely 
remembered  by  believers  as  well ;  and  the  controversy  as  to 
divine  governance  is  carried  on  in  a  blind  fashion.  Uncon- 
scious assumptions  are  made,  and  some  of  the  things  taken  for 
granted  are  not  true;  and,  in  consequence,  evidence  that  is 
really  irrelevant  is  admitted  and  taken  as  conclusive. 

Now,  in  this  fundamental  question  of  the  validity  of  the 
religious  faith  it  would  seem  to  me  that  no  values  should  be 
admitted  as  standards  by  which  to  judge  the  assumed  divine 
dealings  except  values  which  are  absolute.  And,  for  my  part, 
I  know  no  values  which  are  absolute  except  spiritual  values. 
That  is  to  say,  everything  that  contributes  to  the  spiritual 
progress  of  man  I  would  call  good,  everything  that  tends  to 
hinder  it  I  would  call  bad.  And  evidently  if  moral  values 
verily  are  absolute,  as  Plato  and  most  other  great  teachers  have 
maintained,  then  no  price  at  which  moral  progress  is  secured 
can  be  too  high.  And  if  pain  and  suffering,  poverty  and  need, 
and  the  contempt  of  men  contribute  to  this  end  more  than 
their  opposites  could,  then  they  are  better  than  good  health 
and  plenty  and  the  honour  of  men.  This  means  that,  instead 
of  making  secular  prosperity  the  standard  of  judgment,  pros- 
perity must  itself  be  evaluated  from  the  point  of  view  of  its 
spiritual  effects.  Prosperity  before  now  has  ruined  men,  and 
calamity  has  been  the  making  of  them. 

If  this  be  true,  if  spiritual  values  are  alone  final  and  absolute, 
if  the  purpose  of  man's  life  is  to  acquire  these,  and  the  aim  of 
its  changing  circumstances  is  to  help  him,  then  it  is  evident 
that  what  is  highest,  best,  divine,  is  in  power  and  operative  in 
man's  destiny,  or,  in  the  language  of  religion,  that  God  is 
immanent  in  the  world  as  its  ultimate  principle.     And  vice 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  169 

versa:  if  God  is  immanent,  these  spiritual  values  must  be 
supreme.  On  the  other  hand,  if  this  is  not  true,  then  the 
alternative  must  be  either  the  rule  of  chaos  and  unreason — 
which  in  truth  is  the  absence  of  all  rule — or  else  the  rule  of 
a  power  to  whom  the  difference  between  right  and  wrong  is 
secondary — a  power  whose  ends  are  finite  and  secular. 

Now,  the  denial  of  the  existence  or  working  of  a  God  who 
is  perfect  in  moral  qualities  as  in  power,  is  equivalent,  it  seems 
to  me,  to  the  affirmation  of  some  non-ethical  force  as  that  which 
has  brought  the  universe  into  being,  sustains  it,  and  controls 
it.  And  the  question  now  is — How  does  this  secular  hypoth- 
esis work?  Supposing  we  apply  the  same  tests  to  it,  one  by 
one,  as  have  been  applied  to  the  believer's  "faith"  or  counter- 
hypothesis? 

If  the  secularist  is  frank  and  faithful  to  the  facts  which  he 
observes,  he  will  admit  at  once  that,  in  this  world  of  ours, 
warring  against  its  evils,  there  is  to  be  found  a  great  deal  of 
that  which  we  can  only  call  moral  goodness.  There  are  just 
men,  and  unselfish  men,  and  men  courageous  for  what  they 
deem  right  or  true;  and  they  cannot  but  be  distinguished  from 
the  men  who  are  selfish  and  cowardly  and  filthy.  Now,  the 
secularist  must  account  for  that  goodness,  or — if  he  likes — 
that  seeming  goodness;  and  give  his  own  theory  of  the  origin 
of  these  apparently  moral  phenomena.  And  his  task  does  not 
seem  to  be  an  easy  one.  It  is  not  obvious,  to  say  the  least,  that 
no  moral  struggle  enters  into  the  history  of  mankind,  or  that 
good  men  differ  from  bad  men  only  in  the  success  of  their 
hypocrisy.  A  few  decades  ago,  as  I  have  already  suggested, 
the  secularist  might  attribute  to  nature  the  moral  character 
and  the  benevolent  purpose  which  he  denies  to  God.  But  now 
it  is  seen  that  such  a  device  merely  clothes  nature  with  divinity. 
The  truth  is  that  the  secularist,  as  a  rule,  has  nothing  to  offer. 
He  has  never  faced  the  problem  presented  by  the  obvious  sig- 
nificance attached  by  mankind  to  the  difference  between  right 
and  wrong,  and  the  part  which  ethical  conceptions  have  played 
in  its  history. 

The  order  and  the  beauty  of  nature  are  generally  first  felt 


170  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

to  be  a  test  of  his  scepticism.  That  these  exist  he  neither  dares 
nor  desires  to  deny.  The  evidence  of  order  is  always  multi- 
plying and  deepening;  and  the  marvel  of  the  universe  grows 
every  day  in  the  hands  of  science.  So  subtle  is  the  equilibration 
of  nature's  forces  that  the  practical  man  hesitates  in  his  deal- 
ings with  her,  even  as  his  power  over  her  forces  grows.  What 
he  has  called  pests  have  proved  to  be  his  helpers,  and  he  has 
become  afraid  to  meddle  with  nature's  harmonies.  In  fact,  it 
has  now  become  practically  impossible  to  most  reflective  men 
to  assign  the  order  of  the  natural  universe  to  an  unintelligent 
cause.  For  a  cause  must  manifestly  be  proportionate  to  the 
effects  attributed  to  it. 

The  beauty  of  the  natural  world  seems  to  carry  one  further 
even  than  its  obvious  order.  Beauty  comes  as  something  gratui- 
tously generous.  It  is  a  benevolent  redundancy,  having  a  value 
that  is  quite  different  from  mere  utility.  The  natural  endow- 
ments usually  spoken  of  are  those  calculated  to  equip  man,  or 
beast,  for  "the  struggle  for  existence."  But  beauty,  presumably 
appealing  to  man  only  and  not  to  animals,  has  value  of  another 
kind.  Its  purpose  seems  to  be  to  enrich  and  not  merely  to 
preserve  life,  and  its  appeal  is  to  reason.  It  is  thus  difliicult 
to  conceive  of  beauty  as  proceeding  from  an  unintelligent 
source.  We  seem  forced  to  conclude  that,  if  not  God,  then 
surely  some  other  kind  of  cause  at  once  intelligent  and  benevo- 
lent has  brought  it  about  that  the  world  shall  be  clothed  in 
beauty,  and  thus  fill  humanity's  cup  till  it  runs  over.  It  is 
difficult  to  sympathize  with  a  naturalism  to  which  the  marvels 
of  colour,  form  and  musical  sound  give  no  pause.  Their  in- 
trinsic value  is  at  once  unique  and  very  great. 

Scepticism  finds  more  natural  nutriment  in  the  world  of  man 
than  in  the  physical  world.  In  that  domain  chaos  and  unreason 
may  well  seem  to  bear  unquestioned  rule.  What,  except  un- 
reason, could  have  placed  the  lives  of  many  thousands  of  young 
men  and  the  happiness  of  thousands  of  homes  at  the  mercy  of 
a  petty,  pompous,  self-adoring  individual  who  happened  to  have 
been  born  the  eldest  son  of  a  crowned  parentage?  How  often 
has  this  question  not  been  asked,  in  some  form,  during  the  late 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  171 

war?  And  there  was,  as  a  rule,  no  answer  except  that  of  the 
unbeliever:  "There  is  no  God."  "If  God  is,  he  does  not  care 
for  man."  "He  is  an  evil  being:  for  by  permitting  evil  he 
is  guilty  of  complicity."  "If  God  is  there,  and  is  worthy  of 
man's  services  and  worship,  then  let  him  show  himself." 

The  demand,  as  a  rule,  is  for  some  special  intervention,  and 
the  absence  of  evidence  of  a  meddling  Providence  has  often 
been  the  source,  not  only  of  the  scepticism  of  the  unbeliever, 
but  of  the  doubt  of  the  faithful.  I  should  like  to  show  that 
the  demand  is,  in  truth,  a  demand  for  that  which  is  not 
desirable. 

It  is  obvious  that  the  demand  for  the  intervention  of  the 
divine  being  in  special  circumstances  implies  his  non-interven- 
tion in  ordinary  times.  It  is  a  demand  that  cannot  be  made 
by  any  one  who  believes  either  in  the  permanence  of  the  relation 
of  antecedent  and  consequent  in  the  natural  and  moral  world, 
or  in  the  divine  omnipresence,  finding  evidence  of  it  on  all  hands 
in  the  world's  ordinary  course.  The  fulfilment  of  the  demand 
would  yield  a  far  less  satisfying  religious  experience  than  the 
consciousness  of  the  nearness  of  God  through  his  love,  at  all 
times  and  in  every  kind  of  circumstance.  And  it  is  that  con- 
sciousness which  sustains  devout  men.  "Providential"  inter- 
ference implies  a  separateness  which  is  intolerable  to  the  spirit 
that  knows  the  longing  of  devoted  love  and  its  constant  need 
of  God.  No  conception  can  meet  the  demands  of  such  a  spirit, 
once  it  understands  itself,  except  the  conception  of  Divine 
Immanence:  the  idea  of  the  permanent  indwelling  of  God  in 
human  history.  The  conception  has  its  own  difficulties,  as  we 
shall  amply  see;  but  it  has  become  an  article  in  the  creed  of 
the  reflective  religious  spirit  of  modern  times.  And  the  issues 
which  are  raised  by  it  are  decisive.  On  the  other  hand  it  is 
not  an  implicit  scepticism  masquerading  as  religious  faith,  which 
the  conception  of  divine  occasional  interv^ention  always  is. 

But,  in  the  second  place,  the  demand  that  God  should  "show 
Himself"  by  special  providential  interference  is  open  to  a  still 
more  grave  objection.  It  is  incompatible  with  the  conception 
of  man's  life  as  an  ethical  enterprise,  and  of  his  world  as  fur- 


172  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

nishing  the  means  and  opportunity,  and,  in  that  sense,  as  man's 
working  partner.  The  Deism  of  the  eighteenth  century-  denied 
both  the  permanent  indwelling  and  the  intermittent  interven- 
tion of  the  Deity.  It  maintained  that  God,  having  called  the 
world  into  being,  stood  aloof  and  apart.  There  are  many 
objections  to  this  view  which  I  need  not  mention.  But  it  was 
not  altogether  false.  With  all  its  errors  Deism  taught  one 
permanent  truth,  or  at  least  implied  it:  the  truth  that  the 
moral  life  must  be  wholly  entrusted  to  the  moral  agent;  and 
that  if  man  is  here  to  learn  goodness,  or  if  the  meaning  of  his 
life  and  the  purpose  of  his  world  is,  as  we  have  assumed, 
ultimately  ethical,  then  he  must  be  left  to  earn"  out  the  ethical 
experiment  in  his  own  way.  What  use  he  shall  make  of  his 
powers  and  his  circumstances  must  be  left  to  him.  For,  as 
we  have  seen,  there  is  a  sense  in  which  morality  is  a  most 
solitan-  enterprise. 

I  do  not  in  the  least  mean  to  imply  the  severance  of  morality 
from  religion,  or  man  from  God,  or  that  in  the  pursuit  of 
his  moral  ends  man  is  thrown  upon  his  own  resources.  On 
the  contraty,  the  religion  that  does  not  break  out  into  the 
highest  moral  life,  and  the  moral  life  that  is  not  guided  and 
inspired  by  a  religious  faith  in  that  which  is  perfect,  are  both 
unsatisfactory.  Moreover,  man  possesses  no  resources  which 
are  his  ovrn  in  any  exclusive  sense.  He  is  a  debtor  to  that 
which  went  before  him  and  to  that  which  works  all  round 
him  for  all  that  he  is  and  all  that  he  possesses.  He  is  as  much 
the  product  of  the  world  as  a  fruit  tree. 

This  is  too  obvious  to  be  denied  by  anyone,  so  far  as  man's 
physical  frame  and  physical  powers  are  concerned.  He  appears 
on  the  scene  as  a  very  temporary  focus  in  which  those  forces 
are  found  together  as  elements  in  a  single  life.  And  the  anal- 
og^•  holds  of  his  spiritual  equipment.  His  faculties  are  gifts, 
and  the  opportunities  of  employing  and  realizing  them  are 
endowments.  His  reason,  his  very  self,  his  disposition,  procliv- 
ities, taste,  and  above  all  the  fundamental  necessity  he  is  under 
to  conceive  and  seek  what,  in  some  sense,  he  thinks  good,  appear 
in  him  rather  than  begin  with  him.     His  individuality  is  due 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  173 

to  the  intense  unity  of  these  forces.  It  means  that  he  is  con- 
scious of  and,  in  that  sense,  in  possession  and  command  of 
himself.  As  such  a  unit)'  or  individualit}-,  man  is  in  a  very 
real  sense  something  new,  and  has  no  history.  His  self  is 
traceable  to  no  antecedents,  as  its  elements  are.  But  these 
elements,  on  the  other  hand,  are  impotent  and  meaningless 
until  they  are  united  in  a  rational  self-consciousness.  We  err 
in  our  account  of  man  if  we  overlook  his  indebtedness,  or  in 
any  manner  weaken  his  afEnit}'  and  continuity  with  the  phy- 
sical and  spiritual  world.  To  detach  him  from  the  Universe 
is  to  empty  his  personality  and  deprive  it  of  its  constitutive 
elements. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  it  is  only 
as  meeting,  uniting  and  operating  in  him  that  these  capacities 
are  realized.  Only  as  employed  by  a  rational  being  do  these 
capacities  and  tendencies,  the  impulses,  desires,  needs,  etc., 
acquire  any  spiritual  character  at  all.  The  instinct  of  self- 
preser\-ation,  characteristic  of  all  life,  is  transmuted  into  a  con- 
scious purpose  and  acquires  the  character  of  a  moral  duty  or 
opportunity'.  The  blind  impulse  becomes  a  conscious  desire ; 
the  natural  need  becomes  a  rational  purpose.  It  has  acquired 
an  ethical  character.  And  as  man  learns  to  know"  the  truth  and 
to  love  and  do  what  is  right,  he  realizes  for  the  first  time  the 
sleeping  potencies  of  his  personalit}'  and  exhibits  the  characters 
of  a  rational  being.  A  rational  nature  means  much.  In  the 
first  place  it  implies  universality',  or,  shall  I  say,  a  potential 
omnipresence.  If  the  rational  subject,  on  the  one  hand,  holds 
every  object  over  against  itself  at  arm's  length,  by  the  same  act 
it  overpowers  all  that  is  alien  or  foreign  in  its  object,  and  turns 
its  meaning  and  uses  into  possessions  of  its  own — as  personal 
increase  of  power.    A  man's  world  is  his  objective  self. 

In  the  second  place,  that  which  is  in  its  nature  universal,  or 
at  home  everywhere,  is  virtually  self-directing,  and  the  world 
around  it  is  but  its  instrument  and  means.  The  forces  that 
move  it  must  be  its  own.  It  is  impossible  for  rational  beings 
to  act  except  in  order  to  realize  conceptions  of  which  they  them- 
selves are  the  authors.    They  are  the  creators  of  their  motives. 


174  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

and  the  motives  are  the  forces  of  the  self  as  it  breaks  out  into 
deeds. 

Now,  in  the  presence  of  these  facts,  the  intermittent  inter- 
ference of  providence  in  the  course  of  events  reveals  itself 
plainly  as  irrational,  (a)  Given  a  world  which  endows  man 
with  all  that  he  is  and  has,  a  world  which,  on  the  other  hand, 
reveals  its  full  character  only  in  man's  spiritual  activities; 
(b)  let  reason  be  established  as  intrinsically  universal,  or  as  a 
power  that  ever  comes  upon  its  own  content  in  every  object 
which  it  interprets;  (c)  make  it,  as  we  are  doing,  the  meaning 
of  man's  life  and  the  purpose  of  the  world  to  realize  in  knowl- 
edge and  behaviour  these  rational  and  spiritual  capacities,  then 
the  occasional  benevolent  intervention  of  a  well-meaning  but 
ordinarily  uninterested  Deity  becomes  not  only  absurd,  but 
obstructive.  Stability,  rational  connections  between  fact  and 
fact,  are  unconditional  characteristics  of  a  religious  scheme. 
Moreover,  they  are  the  only  conditions  under  which  a  rational 
being  would  choose  to  act  at  all.  A  rational  being  would 
hardly  exercise  his  rational  powers  within  an  environment  of 
contingencies.  No  one  can  employ  these  powers  except  in  virtue 
of  his  individuality;  but  his  employment  of  them  would  be 
frustrated,  if  not  arrested  altogether,  were  the  results  of  his 
action  made  uncertain  by  being  flung  amongst  circumstances 
which  are  dependent  upon  an  interfering  benevolence  that 
occasionally  suspends  the  operation  of  law. 

The  stable  order  of  the  world  in  which  man  lives  is  thus 
as  vital  a  condition  of  his  moral  life  as  is  his  freedom.  Free- 
dom cannot  exist  in  a  world  of  contingencies.  Man  in  his 
action  must  presume  the  rational  stability  of  the  universe; 
indeed,  he  always  does  so,  consciously  or  unconsciously;  and  his 
presumption  must  be  valid.  There  must  be  no  providential 
interventions.    God,  as  Browning  said, 

"Stands  away,  as  it  were  a  hand's  breadth  off" 

in  order 

"To  give   room  for  the   newly  made  to   live 
And  look  at  him  from  a  place  apart." 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  176 

In  speaking  of  man  we  must  not  sever  man's  very  elements 
from  him,  and  think  of  him  as 

"Made  perfect  as  a  thing  of  course." 

The  spiritual  life  must  be  an  object  of  choice  amidst  rational 
and  stable  circumstances,  and  the  moral  world  must  be  called 
into  and  sustained  in  existence  by  the  exercise  of  the  human 
will.  That  man  must  be  endowed  for  the  moral  enterprise, 
that  other  hands  than  his  own  must  clasp  on  this  spiritual 
armour  is  true.    He  by  no  means,  as  Browning  thought, 

"Stands  on  his  own  stock 
Of  love  and  power  as  a  pin-point  rock." 

Man,  in  that  case,  would  have  a  very  scanty  and  insecure 
foothold.  I  conceive  of  him  rather  as  the  heir  to  an  inheritance 
whose  value  is  without  limit.  As  I  have  tried  to  show,  reason 
is  by  its  very  nature  universal,  and  man  as  rational  has  the 
whole  realm  of  the  real  as  the  potential  object  of  his  knowledge 
and  means  of  his  ends.  Let  him  but  attain,  himself,  he  will 
find  "the  world  at  his  feet."  But  the  process  of  attaining 
himself  must  be  left  to  himself.  The  use  of  his  powers  must 
be  in  his  own  hands.  His  actions,  good  or  bad,  must  be  allowed 
to  bring  their  own  consequences,  and  the  tree  of  his  life  must 
bear  its  own  fruit.  If  the  testimony  of  the  religious  con- 
sciousness be  true,  God  has  given  himself  to  man,  surely  a  most 
ample  endowment,  and  man  can  need  nothing  more.  If  the 
testimony  of  the  moral  consciousness  be  true,  man  makes  his 
own  use  of  his  endowments  and  may  turn  his  gifts  into  losses. 
In  this  respect  he  is  left  to  himself,  that  is,  treated  as  a  rational 
being  capable  of  free  choice.  Nor  is  there  anything  incom- 
patible in  these  dissimilar  convictions.  On  the  contrary,  both 
alike  are  essential  to  the  best  life ;  and  they  are  reconciled  with 
one  another  in  every  life  which  finds  that  the  service  of  God  is 
perfect  freedom. 

The  demand  for  providential  intervention  made  by  the 
sceptic  as  ground  for  believing  in  the  existence  and  benevolence 
of  the  Deity,  however  excusable  when  man  seems  to  be  tried 


176  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

beyond  his  strength — as  in  the  great  war — is  inconsistent  with 
man's  spiritual  well-being  and  with  divine  benevolence  and  wis- 
dom. I  should  like  to  point  out  further  that  the  demand 
implies  a  wrong  notion  of  man's  knowledge  of  God.  Even 
were  the  demand  conceded,  the  doubt  would  not  be  allayed, 
nor  its  grounds  removed.  Supposing,  for  instance,  that  some 
change  of  circumstances  took  place,  which  at  the  same  time 
favoured  our  wishes  and  seemed  inexplicable — e.g.  the  German 
reverse  at  Mons,  at  the  beginning  of  the  war,  as  it  appeared 
to  those  who  sympathized  with  the  allies — that  favourable  and 
inexplicable  change  would  furnish  nothing  more  than  an  oppor- 
tunity for  making  an  inference.  One  observer  might  infer 
providential  interference  and  the  special  presence  of  a  benevo- 
lent deity;  his  neighbour  would  infer  some  error  of  judgment 
or  defective  execution  on  the  part  of  the  Germans.  The  matter 
would  still  be  in  dispute. 

The  demand  rests  on  the  assumption  that  God  himself  is 
an  object  of  perception.  The  sceptic  seems  to  expect  to  come 
upon  him,  and  catch  him  in  the  act  of  interfering  as  he  would 
catch  a  workman  at  his  tools.  But  we  arrive  at  the  idea  of 
God  in  quite  another  way,  and  we  base  our  faith  in  his  power 
and  goodness  on  other  grounds.  The  idea  of  God  comes  as 
a  possible,  or  probable  and  convincing,  explanation  of  the  uni- 
verse and  of  man's  life  and  destiny.  If  you  like  to  call  the  idea 
a  hypothetical  conjecture,  I  cannot  object.  But  I  would  remind 
you  that  every  other  conception  that  brings  order  into  our 
experience  has  the  same  history  and  the  same  character.  Kant 
called  such  conceptions  regulative:  without  them  experience 
would  have  no  systematic  coherence,  and  even  perception  would 
be  blind.  Hume,  looking  into  himself,  failed  to  come  across 
his  soul.  His  failure  was  inevitable.  The  soul  is  not  an  object 
of  internal  perception,  but  a  name  we  give  to  the  living  unity 
of  man's  rational  powers.  We  see  the  process  of  the  operation 
of  these  powers,  infer  their  existence,  and  call  their  unity  a 
"soul."  Now,  as  an  "inference"  or  "hypothesis"  it  would  seem, 
at  first  sight,  that  the  evidence  of  God  is  insecure — much  more 
insecure  than  if  He  were  an  object  of  perception,  which,  so 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  177 

to  speak,  we  could  knock  up  against.  But  it  is  not  so.  The 
surest  truths  are  those  whose  denial  would  render  all  truth 
impossible;  the  safest  conceptions  are  those  without  which  the 
order  of  experience  would  be  broken.  We  do  not  prove  a 
thing  by  saying  that  it  is  an  object  of  perception.  On  the  con- 
trary, our  perceptions  have  themselves  to  be  correlated  and 
tested  by  reference  to  the  system  of  knowledge  as  a  whole,  if 
they  are  to  have  meaning  and  to  convince.  Ancient  scepticism 
has  demonstrated  once  for  all  the  untrustworthiness  of  sensible 
perception,  and  modern  philosophy  has  shown  that  in  and  of 
itself,  and  apart  from  the  correlating  and  systematizing  princi- 
ples of  experience,  it  has  no  meaning. 

Moreover,  as  I  have  tried  to  show,  the  particulars  which  are 
objects  of  perception  are  in  truth  not  premisses  from  which 
deductions  may  be  made,  but  tests  of  fundamental  explanations. 
And  undoubtedly  it  is  as  such  a  fundamental  explanation  that 
the  idea  of  God  is  offered.  Man  derives  it  mainly  from  his 
interpretation  of  his  own  nature  and  needs.  God  is  man's 
refuge  from  himself.  He  is  strength  as  against  his  own  weak- 
ness ;  purity  as  against  his  own  sinfulness ;  the  fulness  of  plenty 
as  against  his  own  poverty ;  and,  in  a  word,  perfection  as  against 
his  own  imperfection.  Having  found  his  refuge  and  given  him- 
self to  his  God,  and  found  in  him  the  meaning  and  purpose 
of  life,  the  religious  spirit  finds  him  everywhere.  And  so  far 
as  I  know  there  is  no  better  explanation  of  the  nature  of  things 
than  as  the  outcome  of  the  Divine  Will;  and  no  better  con- 
ception of  God,  or  the  Absolute,  than  as  the  inexhaustible 
source  of  the  spiritual  energy  operative  in  the  world  and  mani- 
festing itself  in  man's  moral  and  religious  life.  Nor,  on  the 
other  hand,  could  Divine  Love  itself  make  a  more  generous 
gift  to  mankind  than  that  of  the  spirit  that  strives  towards 
virtues  and  seeks  self-realization  in  the  morality  which  is  at 
the  same  time  the  service  of  God. 

It  remains  both  to  explain  and  to  defend  this  conception  of 
the  Divine  Being  and  his  relation  to  finite  existence.  Mean- 
time it  may  be  observed  that  it  is  a  hypothesis  which  has  no 
worthy  rival.     Spiritualistic  Idealism,  in  some  one  or  other  of 


178  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

its  forms,  holds  the  field.  Connections  within  the  natural 
scheme  are  growing  apace  in  the  hands  of  science:  that  nature 
as  a  whole  is  the  expression  of  one  single  principle  is  deemed 
certain.  But  the  sciences  refrain  from  forming  even  conjectures 
as  to  the  nature  of  that  principle.  The  continuity  of  the 
natural  and  spiritual,  and  their  interdependence,  are  recognized 
as  so  intimate  that  the  ordinary  dualistic  view  is  no  longer 
authoritative.  Nevertheless  no  theory  now  occupies  in  the 
scientific  mind  the  place  once  held  by  naturalistic  materialism. 
Science  leaves  these  matters  to  the  philosopher.  As  to  the 
sceptic,  he  is  quite  helpless,  and  offers  no  positive  suggestion  of 
any  kind.  The  evil,  natural  and  moral,  which  he  has  observed 
in  the  world,  has  raised  his  indignation,  but  not  the  spirit  of 
persistent  enquiry.  He  is,  as  a  rule,  liable  to  be  impatient 
of  explanations  offered  by  others,  and  too  ready  to  assume  that 
to  explain,  and  especially  to  justify  this  fundamental  article 
of  religious  faith  as  to  the  being  and  nature  of  God,  must  be 
to  reduce  the  reality  of  sin  and  to  take  the  sting  out  of  human 
wrong.  And  some  forms  of  modern  Idealism  have,  one  must 
confess,  gone  far  to  justify  this  conclusion. 

What  defence,  then,  can  be  offered?  How,  in  particular, 
are  the  difficulties  as  to  natural  and  moral  evil  to  be  met?  I 
have  made  two  main  assertions  as  to  the  relation  between 
natural  and  spiritual  good  and  evil:  first,  that  "in  the  long 
run"  right  behaviour  brings  physical  and  material  well-being, 
and  wrong  behaviour  the  opposite;  second,  that  only  in  the  light 
of  their  spiritual  value  can  natural  events  be  estimated.  But 
one  can  imagine  the  sceptic  replying,  Why  "in  the  long  run"  ? 
Why  is  the  relation  between  right  conduct  and  material  or 
physical  prosperity  not  direct  and  immediate?  If  it  is  granted 
that  the  value  of  natural  facts  does  not  lie  in  themselves,  and 
that  we  do  not  know  whether  a  natural  circumstance  is  to  be 
called  good  or  bad  until  we  know  its  bearing  upon  human 
life,  and,  ultimately,  upon,  human  character,  then  it  must  be 
admitted  that  the  "nature  of  things"  is  moral.  Why,  then,  is 
nature's  response  to  right  and  wrong  action  not  direct?  Why 
does  the  consequence  arrive  only  "in  the  long  run"?     In  one 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  179 

word,  why  is  man  not  rapped  over  the  fingers  at  once  when 
he  does  wrong?  Why  are  the  consequences  of  right  or  wrong 
doing  so  long  postponed?  And,  above  all,  why  do  they  often 
fall  upon  some  one  else  than  the  person  who  has  done  the  right 
or  the  wrong  deed  ?  The  results  of  actions  do  not  appear,  one 
often  observes,  till  the  third  or  fourth  generation:  they  "take 
time"  to  ripen  into  their  consequences.  In  the  meanwhile  the 
second  and  third  generations  escape. 

Reasons  have  already  been  shown  for  refraining  from  the 
attempt  to  explain  "particular"  instances,  unless  the  concessions 
made  to  science  are  refused  in  matters  of  religion.  The 
answer,  if  any,  as  in  science,  takes  the  form  of  a  general 
hypothesis. 

If  the  wrong  act  were  followed  by  physical  disaster  and  the 
right  act  by  material  prosperity  as  promptly  as  the  roll  of  thun- 
der follows  the  lightning  what  would  result?  As  things  are, 
it  is  the  moral  consequence  of  right  or  wrong  action  which  is 
immediate,  taking  the  form  of  either  the  improvement  or  the 
deterioration  of  the  character.  That  ethical  result,  moreover, 
always  falls  to  the  agent  himself,  and  affects  others  only  indi- 
rectly and  remotely.  In  both  of  these  ways  the  difference  is 
clear.  And  the  contrast  between  these  two  conditions  seems  to 
me  to  favour  the  moralizing  process  in  mankind,  and  to  be  the 
result  of  benevolent  wisdom.  The  scheme  of  things,  if  its  pur- 
pose is  spiritual  (as  we  assume),  stops  short  of  terrifying  or 
bribing  man  into  good  behaviour;  but  at  the  same  time  it  in- 
vites reflection  and  persuades.  The  freedom  of  man  is  respected, 
and,  at  the  same  time,  the  fact  that  he  himself  may  escape  the 
consequences  of  wrong-doing  which  fall  upon  others  who  are 
guiltless  ought  to  be,  and  is,  an  appeal  to  his  ethical  spirit. 
We  are  not  compelled.  The  imperative  "don't"  or  "do  this"  is 
not  an  external  forcing,  as  it  would  be  on  the  secularist's 
scheme. 

The  answer  to  the  sceptical  objections  seems,  therefore,  once 
more  to  depend  upon  the  moral  character  and  values  of  natural 
events.  And  the  same  moral  considerations  account  for  the  ex- 
istence, at  all,  of  natural  evil.     For  the  sceptic  might  ask — 


180  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

"Why,  after  all,  is  there  pain  and  suffering  of  body,  soul,  or 
both?"  Could  not  the  spiritual  advance  of  mankind  be  se- 
cured by  some  less  costly  method?  Physical  pain,  I  believe,  is 
nature's  way  of  indicating  that  a  law  of  physical  well-being 
has  been  violated,  and  of  saying  "Don't  do  it  again."  To  abol- 
ish pain  so  that,  for  instance,  a  child  might  look  at  his  foot 
burning  ofif  in  the  flames  and  enjoy  the  sight,  would  be  to  de- 
prive man  of  the  most  potent  safeguard.  Physical  pain  is  a 
language  so  plain  that  everyone  hears  and  understands. 

And  as  to  the  suffering  of  others  from  our  deeds,  it  is  the 
same  kind  of  warning  but  on  another  plane;  and  except  when 
the  instincts  of  motherhood  come  into  play,  rebellion  against 
its  injustice  is  usual.  Once  more  the  educative  character  of 
the  scheme  of  things,  and  its  share  in  the  ethical  progress  of 
man,  reveal  themselves.  Everything  that  involves  the  well- 
being  of  men  in  one  another  favours  morality. 

One  conclusion  seems  to  me  to  be  valid.  The  difficulties  are 
met  if,  and  in  so  far  as,  our  estimate  of  good  and  evil  rests 
loyally  on  the  moral  nature  and  purpose  of  the  world. 

But  this  involves  that  events  must  not  be  valued  at  all  as 
separate  or  in  themselves.  They  must  be  regarded  in  their 
relation  to  the  self-justifying  process  of  the  whole. 


LECTURE  XIV 

THE   PERFECT  AS   SPIRITUAL  PROCESS 

At  the  close  of  our  last  lecture  we  were  considering  the  scep- 
tical objections  which  are  drawn  from  the  existence  of  natural 
evil.  We  concluded  primarily  that  natural  events  and  facts 
cannot,  as  such,  be  called  either  good  or  bad.  Their  value  is 
conditional  and  derivative.  It  depends  on  the  contribution  they 
make  to  the  moral  well-being  of  man.  Secondly,  as  to  the  re- 
lation between  moral  behaviour  and  temporal  and  natural 
prosperity,  we  maintained  (a)  that  as  right  conduct  means  the 
best  use  of  natural  circumstance,  and  as  the  best  use  involves  a 
right  understanding,  there  does  exist  a  necessary  connection; 
that  is  to  say,  natural  well-being  does  follow  right  behaviour 
and  disaster  dogs  the  footsteps  of  the  ill-doer,  (b)  To  the  ob- 
jection that  these  results  often  appear  only  in  "the  long  run,"  I 
answered  that  "a  thunder-clap" — or  immediate  consequence — 
would  obscure  the  moral  issues,  which  are  primary  and  should 
be  recognized  as  such.  The  postponement  and  indirectness  of 
the  natural  consequences,  and  their  falling  frequently  not  on 
the  doer  of  the  deed  but  on  those  connected  with  him,  and,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  immediacy  and  inevitability  of  the  moral 
improvement  or  self-degradation,  favours  this  recognition,  (c) 
Finally,  to  the  objection  that  it  is  wholly  unjustifiable  that  one 
man  should  do  the  wrong  thing  and  another  sufEer  the  conse- 
sequence,  or  that  one  man  should  do  the  right  thing  and  an- 
other reap  the  advantage,  we  replied  by  referring  to  the  same 
principle,  namely,  that  it  favours  morality.  Everything 
favours  morality  which  involves  the  life  of  all  in  the  life  of 
each,  and  the  welfare  of  each  in  the  well-being  of  all.  To  learn 
goodness  men  must  be  members  of  one  another,  and  if  they  are 
members  of  one  another  they  must  share  the  same  destiny. 

181 


182  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

Thus,  it  seems,  strict  fidelity  to  the  view  that  the  purpose  of 
man's  life  and  of  the  world  is  moral  (or  spiritual)  progress, 
meets  the  difficulties  of  the  existence  of  natural  evil.  And 
possibly  the  most  effective  and  convincing  way  of  proving  this 
were  to  consider  the  consequences  that  would  accrue  if  all  nat- 
ural evil  were  abolished,  and  if  men  did  not  suffer  at  all, 
whether  from  their  own  actions  or  from  the  actions  of  others. 
Devotion  to  pleasure  in  a  beer  and  skittles  environment  does 
not  seem  likely  to  conduce  to  spiritual  endeavour. 

But  the  solution  of  the  difficulty  of  natural  evil,  namely, 
that  it  is  a  means  to  a  further  good,  and,  in  truth,  has  no  in- 
trinsic value  or  character  of  its  own — that  solution  is  wholly 
inapplicable  to  moral  evil.  Moral  values  are  final.  In  this 
spiritual  region,  as  I  have  already  insisted,  we  are  dealing  with 
that  which  is  in  itself  good  or  bad.  What  is  morally  right 
respects,  and  what  is  morally  wrong  violates,  a  principle  that  is 
absolute.  A  morally  wrong  action  cannot,  like  a  natural  mis- 
fortune, be  made  a  stepping-stone  or  an  instrument  of  well- 
being.  In  the  spiritual  sense  the  character  of  the  act,  as  it 
stands,  is  final  and  irremediable.  And  the  question  we  have  to 
answer  is:  How,  if  God  is  verily  perfect  in  power  and  good- 
ness, the  existence  of  moral  evil  can  be  accounted  for.  That 
moral  evil  of  all  kinds  and  degrees  of  enormity  exists  at  all 
stages  of  human  civilization  cannot  be  denied.  Must  we  not, 
therefore,  limit  the  range  and  moderate  the  confidence  of  our 
religious  faith?  Must  not  the  existence  of  God  and  his  power 
and  goodness  be  denied,  or,  what  is  virtually  the  same  thing, 
must  we  not  consider  him  incapable  of  coping  with  the  evil  of 
the  world  ? 

Once  more  our  answer  must  depend  upon  the  standard  of 
values  which  we  employ.  We  have  stated  that  the  standard 
must  be  moral  or  spiritual;  but  no  explanation  of  the  meaning 
of  these  terms  has  been  given.  On  what  grounds,  or  for  what 
reason,  is  an  action  or  an  individual  approved  or  disapproved 
morally?  What  is  it  that  constitutes  its  good  or  its  evil? 
What  kind  of  a  world  would  that  be  which  were  perfect  in  the 
changeless  sense?    Would  it  offer  to  anyone  the  opportunity  of 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  183 

doing  any  good  action  ?  Would  there  be  anything  of  which  we 
could  say  that  it  "ought  to  be,"  and  which  invited  the  choice 
and  decision  of  a  good  will?  So  far  as  I  can  see,  the  call  of 
duty  would  not  be  heard  in  such  a  world.  The  good  man 
could  sit  down  with  his  hands  in  its  lap,  and,  at  best,  idly  con- 
template the  past.  All  action  would,  in  fact,  be  wrong.  It 
would  take  away  from  the  changeless  perfection  which  all  alike 
have,  as  a  matter  of  course.  In  one  word,  such  a  world  would 
not  be  moral  or  spiritual  at  all.  The  enterprise  of  morality 
would  not  exist. 

The  conception  of  static  perfection  in  matters  of  the  mind 
and  spirit  will  not  bear  examination.  The  difficulties  of  attrib- 
uting any  other  kind  of  perfection  than  that  which  is  static  to 
the  deity  are  very  great — possibly  insuperable;  but,  that  static 
categories  can  be  applied  to  man,  a  finite  being,  the  law  of 
whose  life  is  change  and  progress,  it  is  not  possible  to  maintain. 
Can  they,  in  the  last  resort,  be  applied  to  any  finite  object? 
Is  fixity,  changelessness  true  of  anything  even  in  the  natural 
sphere?  That  life  when  it  appears  increases  the  range  and  sig- 
nificance of  change  is  obvious.  Life  is  always  renewing  itself, 
and  affirming  itself  in  fresh  ways  as  its  circumstances  alter. 
The  objects  of  the  inorganic  world  are  relatively  fixed.  How- 
ever true  it  may  be  that 

"An   active  principle    .    .    . 

subsists 
In  all  things," 

that  principle  is  less  active  in  inanimate  objects  than  in  living 
beings.  But  even  in  the  former  there  is  no  static  fixity.  Sci- 
ence teaches  us  that  objects  are  the  temporary  meeting-places, 
or  foci,  of  different  kinds  of  physical  energy.  The  weight,  the 
colour,  the  softness  or  hardness — all  the  qualities  of  a  stone  are 
its  responses  to  other  objects,  or  its  interaction  with  them.  It 
is  what  it  does.  Its  apparently  static  or  fixed  character  is  due 
to  the  fact  that  its  activities  are  reiterative,  or  repetitive.  We 
do  not  expect  a  stone  to  break  into  flower  in  spring,  any  more 
than  we  expect  a  plant  not  to  change  with  the  seasons,  although 


184  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

we  do  expect  it  to  reflect  the  rays  of  light  according  to  con- 
stant laws.  Conceptions  of  fixity,  which  are  never  strictly 
valid  of  any  fact,  become  less  and  less  applicable  as  we  ascend 
the  scale  of  being.  They  mislead,  if  strictly  used,  when  applied 
to  plants  or  animals,  for  the  power  of  variation  implied  in  their 
growth  cannot  be  overlooked ;  but,  as  we  shall  see,  they  are 
least  of  all  predicable  of  the  facts  of  the  life  of  spirit. 

This  signifies  that  process  is  universal,  or  that  everything  is 
in  process.  And  usually  this  is  taken  to  mean  the  same  thing 
as  that  change  is  the  law  of  things.  But  process  implies  same- 
ness as  well  as  change.  An  object  owes  its  (apparently)  sep- 
arate, or  distinct  being,  in  virtue  of  which  we  can  refer  to  it 
as  an  "it,"  to  the  sameness  or  continuity  of  the  process  which 
it  carries  on.  After  all,  the  many  are  the  different  forms  of 
the  one.  The  physicist,  in  the  last  resort,  considers  that  his 
task  is  to  measure  the  transformations  of  the  same  ultimate 
energy.  These  transformations  are  the  truth  and  the  being  of 
particular  physical  facts,  and,  so  far  as  they  go,  they  manifest 
the  nature  of  the  ultimate  reality. 

The  problem  of  the  biologist  is  much  more  complex.  Once 
life  arises  the  variety  of  the  activities  increases;  new  functions 
are  performed,  such  as  digestion ;  new  relations  and  responses 
to  the  environment  emerge;  and  that  static  sameness  which, 
with  comparative  truth,  we  attribute  to  physical  facts  becomes 
quite  false.  At  the  same  time  a  living  thing  affirms  its  unity, 
unites  the  destiny  of  the  parts  with  the  whole,  and  of  the  whole 
with  the  elements,  in  a  way  to  which  there  is  nothing  analo- 
gous in  inorganic  objects.  Sensation  intensifies  the  unity  still 
further;  and  the  unity  culminates  in  self-consciousness.  It  is  a 
great  truth  that  integration  and  differentiation  increase  to- 
gether. And  it  is  borne  out,  not  only  by  the  history  of  the 
biological  kingdom,  but  by  that  of  mankind. 

Now,  it  is  too  obvious  to  need  showing  that  these  opposite 
but  complementary  processes  culminate  in  the  activity  of  spirit. 
The  different  stages  of  human  civilization  and  of  individual  de- 
velopment exemplify  this  truth.  Rudimentary  civilization  per- 
mits few  social  services,  and  the  bonds  which  connect  its  ele- 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  185 

merits  are  very  superficial.  The  Red  Indian  tribes  were  of 
little  mutual  help  in  times  of  peace,  and  they  easily  fell  into 
fighting.  Their  unity  was  slender  and  shallow,  and  it  usually 
lasted  only  so  long  as  they  fought  side  by  side.  Moreover,  the 
variety  of  functions  which  such  communities  could  perform, 
whether  for  each  other  or  for  their  members,  was  very  limited. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  is  difficult  to  estimate  the  variety  of  the 
interests  of  a  civilized  people,  or  of  the  ways  in  which  the  weal 
of  the  citizen  is  either  directly  sought  or  protected  by  the  State. 
From  the  cradle  to  the  grave,  whether  the  individual  be  in 
poverty  or  in  wealth,  the  community  serves  him,  meeting  all 
manner  of  needs.  Its  members  on  their  part  stand  in  their 
station,  fulfil  the  duties  of  it  more  or  less  adequately,  and 
offer  each  of  them  some  single  kind  of  return.  But  these  kinds 
fit  into  each  other.  One  man  feeds  the  ox,  another  kills  and 
skins  it,  a  third  curries  the  skin,  a  fourth  makes  shoes  of  it; 
and  there  is  between  every  pair  of  makers  one  whose  business  is 
to  buy  and  sell.  Other  services,  less  direct,  enter  in.  The 
merchandise  has  to  be  taken  from  one  place  to  another;  some- 
one must  have  made  the  roads,  and  someone  else  must  have  con- 
structed the  conveyances;  still  others  must  have  dug  up  or 
grown  the  material  out  of  which  the  conveyances  are  con- 
structed ;  and  all  alike  have  entered  into  the  inheritance  of  skill, 
tradition,  beliefs,  which  it  has  taken  many  ages  to  accumulate. 
Nothing  in  this  world  can  show  such  diversity  of  interests  or 
such  a  degree  of  differentiation  of  function  as  civilized  society. 
And  its  unity  corresponds.  It  is  universal.  We  are  all  mem- 
bers of  it,  and  we  come  into  touch  with  some  of  its  activities 
at  every  turn  of  our  lives.  Its  influence  permeates  all  the  lives 
of  all  its  members.  It  is  also  intense,  that  is  to  say,  its  signifi- 
cance to  the  individual  is  immeasurable.  We  find  that  to 
sever  man  from  society  is  to  empty  his  life  of  all  value  and 
interest  and  to  make  him  hopeless;  while  to  break  up  the  unity 
of  a  society  is  to  do  him  the  worst  of  all  injuries.  Civil  war 
has  before  now  proved  the  only  available  means  of  rectifying 
social  wrongs;  but  it  has  also  proved  both  the  most  costly  and 
the  most  dangerous  of  remedies. 


186  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

If  we  turn  from  the  story  of  the  community  and  its  relation 
to  its  elements,  and  consider  the  individuals  which  constitute 
it,  we  shall  find  the  same  process  with  the  same  double  aspect. 
Men  differ  from  one  another  in  all  manner  of  ways:  in 
strength  of  body  and  soul:  in  skill,  taste,  temperament,  inter- 
ests, purposes  and  character.  No  other  beings  of  the  same  spe- 
cies difiFer  so  deeply  or  in  so  many  qualities.  Nevertheless,  as 
we  have  seen,  no  animals  unite  so  intimately  as  men  do,  or  in 
so  many  ways,  or  for  such  permanent  ends.  Or  again,  if  we 
follow  the  story  of  the  same  individual  from  infancy  to  old  age, 
unless  he  has  wronged  himself,  his  life  has  been  one  continu- 
ous and  yet  ever  new  and  ever  varying  process.  The  variety 
of  his  interests  has  multiplied.  His  spirit  is  responsive  to  more 
truth,  and  he  is  more  sensitive  to  the  forms  of  beauty,  and  more 
sympathetic  with  the  interests  of  his  fellow-men;  yet  his  aims 
have  become  more  and  more  congruent,  his  views  more  and 
more  harmonious,  and  his  character  has  attained  singleness  and 
simplicity.     Its  unity  has  become  more  and  more  obvious. 

There  can  be  no  doubt,  I  think,  of  either  the  universality  or 
the  law  of  the  process  that  is  always  going  on  in  the  natural 
world,  and  in  the  soul  of  man.  The  next  thing  is  to  realize 
(What  Nettleship  so  persistently  accentuated)  that  the  reality  is 
the  process,  and  that  there  is  no  other  reality  except  the  reality 
which  is  active  as  the  process.  That  a  thing  is  what  it  does  is 
a  cardinal  principle  of  philosophy,  and  I  make  the  less  apology 
for  recurring  to  it  in  that  its  significance  is  so  far-reaching 
and  has  not  so  far  been  realized.  It  looks  so  simple.  A  thing 
that  does  nothing  is  nothing.  Strip  an  object  of  its  activities, 
and  see  what  remains:  you  will  find  nothing.  Usually  an  ob- 
ject is  given  a  more  or  less  static  character,  and  none  of  its 
activities  are  marked  except  those  which  it  exhibits  in  new  rela- 
tions; but  the  constitutive  activities  are  the  constant  ones,  and 
the  object  has  no  permanence  or  reality  save  the  constancy  of 
the  process. 

The  Universe,  then,  is  not  a  unity  of  correlated  and  more  or 
less  fixed  and  separate  objects,  but  the  scene  of  a  constant 
process,  endless  in  the  variety  of  its  activities  which  yet  so  fit 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  187 

into  one  another  as  to  constitute  and  maintain  the  unity  of  the 
whole.  And,  not  only  does  the  kind  of  process  express  the 
nature  of  objects,  but  the  different  objects  are  simply  the  dif- 
ferent processes. 

Now,  in  the  next  place,  I  would  observe  that  the  unity  of 
the  natural  world,  or  rather  the  unity  of  the  world  as  not 
merely  natural,  but — seeing  it  is  relative  to  mind  and  exhibits 
itself  in  the  activities  of  mind,  also  spiritual — is  due  to  the  fun- 
damental singleness  of  the  process  of  the  real.  The  ultimate 
reality  is  one:  the  process  which  that  reality  is,  is  one.  There 
is  one  universe  because  there  is  one  process  at  all  stages  of  com- 
plexity: one  reality  revealing  itself  in  the  endless  variety  of 
activities.  Modern  science  is  no  doubt  less  dogmatic  in  many 
ways  than  it  was  in  the  past.  It  is  more  ready  to  say  simply  "I 
do  not  know."  But,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  becoming  more 
confident  of  the  unity  of  the  real;  and  it  no  longer  resists  the 
view  that,  as  Edward  Caird  used  to  express,  "the  world  comes 
into  self-consciousness  in  man."  We  cannot  always  see  how 
the  elements  of  the  real  are  fitted  into  each  other — or  why 
the  marvel  of  harmony  should  arise  from  a  variety  of  separate 
notes — but  we  can  see  how  the  elements  lose  meaning  and 
reality  when  they  are  separated,  and  we  feel  when  the  music 
stops. 

The  nature  of  the  world-energy  that  breaks  out  into  the  pro- 
cesses which  at  different  levels  the  physicist,  the  biologist,  the 
psychologist  and  the  student  of  human  history  observe,  is  liable 
to  be  defined  in  accordance  with  the  special  province  of  the 
scientific  man's  enquiry.  To  the  physicist  it  is  apt  to  be  physi- 
cal energy  always  in  process  of  measurable  transmutation — so 
long,  at  least,  as  you  omit  mind.  To  the  biologist  the  pristine 
and  universal  energy  is  likely  to  appear  as  life;  it  is  a  vital 
force.  To  the  psychologist  it  is  mind.  But  no  conception  of 
the  world-energy  can  satisfy  the  religious  spirit  or  the  philo- 
sophic, except  that  which  reveals  itself  in  spiritual  activities. 
The  whole  enterprise  of  the  real  must  be  simply  the  achieve- 
ment of  all  the  conditions  of  the  amplest  moral  goodness.  The 
religious  spirit  identifies  this  fundamental,  ever  operative  uni- 


188  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

versal  energy  with  God — the  Christian  religion  pre-eminently 
with  a  God  who  is  Love.  Philosophy  finds  it  to  be  the  active 
energy  of  a  rational  perfection  which  includes  with  moral  good- 
ness, beauty  and  truth.  To  both  alike  it  is  universal,  immanent 
and  active  in  all  that  happens,  and  it  is  perfect.  The  God  of 
religion  is  the  same  as  the  Absolute  of  philosophy;  and  for 
both  alike  the  universe  in  the  last  resort  is  the  scene  of  a  self- 
manifesting  perfection. 

What,  then,  of  evil?  We  can  postpone  the  difficulty  no 
longer,  and  I  trust  that  we  have  now  reached  a  point  of  view 
from  which  it  can  be  dealt  with. 

The  problem  is  that  of  moral  evil.  That  of  natural  evil  is 
relatively  easy.  All  that  is  natural  is  but  means  of  the  spiritual, 
and  its  value,  whether  positive  or  negative,  is,  as  we  have  found, 
both  derived  or  secondary  and  conditional.  We  do  not  as  a 
matter  of  fact  know  whether  a  man's  bad  health,  or  other 
natural  evil,  may  not  be  the  most  priceless  element  in  his  life. 
It  may  be  conducive,  as  nothing  else  could  be,  to  his  spiritual 
good. 

But  moral  evil — to  restate  the  point  at  which  our  argument 
had  arrived — has  a  certain  finality  of  character,  just  as  moral 
good  has.  We  cannot  revalue  it  in  the  light  of  something 
else.  Its  value  is  intrinsic  and  negative.  A  bad  act  stands 
condemned  at  a  court  from  which  there  is  no  appeal.  It  ap- 
pears as  a  final  flaw  in  the  scheme  of  things;  as  something  that 
ought  not  to  have  taken  place,  but,  having  taken  place,  remains 
unredeemed,  even  if  forgiven. 

The  conclusion  usually  drawn  from  this  final  character  of 
spiritual  evil,  a  conclusion  which  looks  inevitable,  is  that  God 
is  imperfect.  He  is  either  responsible  for  the  scheme  of  things 
that  includes  evil  or  he  is  not.  The  latter  alternative  obviously 
implies  that  he  is  a  finite  being;  the  former,  that  he  either  can- 
not or  will  not  exclude  evil  from  the  scheme  and  express  him- 
self in  a  flawless  universe.  Both  alternatives  alike  deprive  God 
of  his  perfection,  and,  in  fact,  stultify  the  conception  upon  the 
truth  of  which  religion  depends. 

But  another  conclusion  is  possible.     Let  it  be  granted  that 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  189 

moral  evil  is  final  and  unalterable,  if  the  world  is  to  serve  the 
spiritual  process  whereby  man  attains  moral  goodness  the 
possibility  of  doing  what  is  morally  wrong  must  remain.  The 
world,  we  have  said,  is  the  manifestation  of  a  never-resting 
process  which  is  spiritual.  Every  act  is  a  step  or  stage  in  this 
process,  and  it  acquires  its  value  therefrom.  That  which  is 
ultimate  operates  in  it;  but  it  operates  in  man  in  such  a  way  as 
to  permit  the  possibility  of  moral  choice  and  therefore  of  moral 
evil.  A  world  that  excluded  this  possibility^  would  not  be  the 
best,  indeed  it  would  not  be  spiritual  at  all.  But  granted  that 
such  a  world  is  best,  then  it  justifies  what  is  incidental  to  it. 

This  argument  may,  perhaps,  be  put  more  simply  thus.  God 
has  called  into  being  the  best  possible  world:  the  best  possible 
world  is  a  world  in  which  the  conditions  of  moral  choice  and 
therefore  of  moral  evil  exist:  moral  evil  is  thus  justified  in  the 
sense  that  its  possibility  is  necessary  as  a  condition  of  what  is 
best. 

But  the  objection  to  this  view  seems  obvious  and  fatal.  The 
best  world  is  not  a  perfect  world.  The  flaw,  we  are  told, 
remains;  the  fact  that  the  possibility  of  evil  must  remain,  if 
morality  is  to  remain,  does  not  justify  the  evil  which  is  done. 
If  that  possibility  were  never  or  seldom  realized ;  if  men  always 
or  generally  chose  the  right  when  they  might  have  chosen  what 
is  wrong,  criticism  might  be  silenced.  But,  alas,  who  can  look 
either  into  himself  or  out  upon  the  world  without  recognizing 
the  presence  of  evil,  its  terrible  power,  the  variety  of  its  forms, 
its  mercilessness,  and  its  inexhaustible  resources?  It  is  only  by 
a  flight  from  such  a  vision  that  a  good  man  who  pities  his 
fellows  can  renew  his  faith  in  the  goodness  of  God.  The  argu- 
ment, it  is  insisted,  leaves  us  with  our  problem  unsolved  in 
our  hands.  It  means  simply  that  this  most  imperfect  world 
is  the  best  possible :  God  could  do  no  better. 

Before  admitting  this  sceptical  conclusion  it  were  well  to 
examine  some  of  the  conceptions  that  are  employed.  And,  first, 
what  is  to  be  said  of  the  distinction  between  the  best  possible 
and  the  perfect?  A  better  than  the  perfect  is  neither  possible 
nor  desirable;  neither  is  a  better  than  the  best  possible.     Are 


190  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

they,  then,  not  "one  and  the  same"?  And  is  not  the  demand 
for  a  world  that  is  better  than  the  best  possible  an  irrational 
demand?  It  is  certainly  a  demand  for  that  which  cannot  be 
at  all.  It  is,  in  truth,  a  demand  for  an  empty  and  meaningless 
nonentit}^  The  impossible  is  that  the  conditions  of  whose  exist- 
ence do  not  themselves  exist.  The  conditions  are  not  only  not 
real,  but  they  would  be  incompatible  with  those  which  are  real. 
The  demand  for  a  better  than  the  best  possible  world  being 
irrational,  ought  not  to  be  made,  or,  if  made,  heeded. 

Now  the  demand  for  a  world  in  which  wrong-doing  is  not 
possible  has  all  these  characteristics.  It  is  not  only  a  demand 
for  that  whose  conditions  do  not  exist,  but  for  that  whose 
conditions  would  be  inconsistent  with  what  is  deemed  best — 
namely,  the  process  of  the  moral  life,  the  spiritual  enterprise. 
It  is  no  proof  of  either  power  or  wisdom  not  to  bring  about 
the  self-contradictory.  God  is  not  imperfect,  nor  is  his  power 
limited  because  he  cannot  bring  about  that  which  contradicts 
itself.     That  were  to  do  and  undo  at  once. 

It  is  evident  that  the  value  of  the  whole  argument  which 
is  advanced  depends  upon  the  idea  which  is  entertained  of  per- 
fection. Is  a  perfect  world  a  world  in  which  nothing  ought 
to  be  that  is  not;  or  in  which  no  change  is  either  desirable 
or  possible?  Then  "our  world"  is  manifestly,  once  for  all, 
most  /V«perfect.  Such  a  static  world,  however,  we  have  said, 
cannot  be  spiritual  in  character,  nor  give  man  the  opportunity 
of  learning  and  practising  goodness.  But  the  learning  and 
practising  of  goodness,  the  active  willing  and  doing  of  what 
is  right,  is,  we  maintain,  the  best  life  possible  for  man ;  and 
the  world  which  most  favours  this  end,  or  which  invites  these 
activities,  calling  upon  man  with  the  voice  of  Duty,  is  the  best 
world.  In  a  word,  the  perfect  world  is  dynamic:  the  scene 
of  the  working  of  the  good.  Hence  evil,  the  only  final  evil, 
would  be  that  which  arrested  this  process.  Accordingly  the 
question  now  before  us  is  whether  moral  evil,  as  we  know  it 
in  ourselves  and  others,  does  arrest  this  process,  or  is  itself  over- 
come, and,  in  the  last  resort,  constrained  to  enter  into  the  serv- 
ice of  the  good. 

This  question  is  a  question  of  fact.     Is  it  a  fact  that  moral 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  191 

evil  is  a  fixed  finality,  or  does  it,  when  it  comes  full  around, 
destroy  itself,  leaving  behind  it  distrust  of  itself  and  incentives 
to  another  way  of  life? 

This  question  is  often  put  in  a  way  that  permits  only  one 
answer.  Evil  is  assumed  to  be  something  objective  and  real, 
standing  over  against  another  objective  and  real  fact  that  we 
call  the  good.  But  neither  evil  nor  good  exists  in  this  sense. 
They  are  characteristics  of  what  is  real  but  not  themselves 
separate  realities.  In  short,  moral  good  and  moral  evil  are 
ways  in  which  the  will  operates,  characteristics  of  man's  aims 
and  efforts.  They  are  evaluations,  or  estimates  of  facts,  true 
or  false;  and  they  exist  only  when,  and  as  long  as,  the  process 
of  willing  goes  on. 

The  question  of  the  permanence  of  evil  becomes  thus  the 
question  of  the  permanence  of  evil  volitions  or  of  the  succes- 
sion of  human  beings  who  perform  bad  actions.  At  first  sight, 
at  least,  there  seems  to  be  but  one  answer  to  it.  There  is  no 
lack  of  evidence  of  unrepentant  bad  wills.  Men  not  only  do 
not  give  up  their  evil  ways,  but  they  become  less  and  less 
capable  of  doing  so.  Their  enslavement,  so  far  as  our  observa- 
tion goes,  becomes  more  and  more  hopeless.  Nor  must  it  be 
forgotten  that  one  genuine  instance  of  a  will  that  remains  unal- 
terably evil — a  will  that  like  Milton's  Satan  makes  evil  its 
good — would  destroy  the  hypothesis  of  divine  perfection  on 
which  religion  rests.  That  instance  would  mean  that  the  limits 
of  the  goodness  or  power  of  God  had  been  reached  and  that 
they  had  been  found  inadequate.  It  were  the  defeat  of  the 
will  of  a  God  who  is  Love. 

Can  such  an  instance  be  produced?  Or  is  this,  once  more, 
not  a  case  in  which  scepticism  (or  at  least  doubt)  is  apt  to  be 
hasty,  and  to  take  not-proven  for  disproved?  Has  the  hypothe- 
sis failed,  or  has  it  merely  not  been  found  true  in  such  cases, 
because  observation  has  been  incomplete? 

It  seems  to  me  that  the  religious  man  can  claim  for  his 
hypothesis  the  same  trust  as  we  accord  to  science.  He  can 
claim  the  right  to  suspend  judgment  on  the  ground  that  the 
evidence  is  not  complete.  He  can  cling  to  his  hypothesis,  as  a 
hypothesis,  or  as  a  possible  and  sane  general  law,  if  he  can 


192  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

produce  instances  in  which  it  appears  to  hold.  We  admit  the 
universahty  of  the  laws  of  nature,  although  there  are  endless 
instances  in  which  we  cannot  trace  their  operation;  we  can 
admit  the  universality  of  the  operation  of  the  divine  will  with- 
out asking  for  any  further  concessions. 

In  the  first  place,  our  observation  of  moral  facts  is  demon- 
strably incomplete.  We,  no  doubt,  call  certain  cases  hopeless. 
The  man's  persistent  evil  ways  are  manifestly  destroying  him, 
and  he  "dies  in  his  sins."  But  can  anyone  be  certain  that  mat- 
ters end  so?  Can  it  be  that  his  demonstration  of  the  ugliness 
and  barrenness  of  evil-doing  has  been  on  the  whole  a  gain  to 
the  world;  and  is  the  real  result  of  his  life — now,  let  us  say, 
finally  extinguished — a  warning  against  evil  and  a  strengthen- 
ing of  the  resolve  towards  goodness?  In  that  case,  although 
the  individual  has  been  deleted,  his  life  so  far  from  arresting 
the  spiritual  process  has  strengthened  it. 

It  may  have  strengthened  the  process  in  others,  I  imagine 
the  critic  replies ;  but  his  own  life  "taken  as  it  stands"  remains 
a  blot  and  a  blur,  and  a  final  failure  of  God's  goodness.  I 
admit  the  validity  of  the  inference  if  the  premisses  on  which 
it  rests  are  true.  The  failure  is  assumed  to  be  final  because  it 
IS  assumed  that  death  ends  matters.  But  does  it?  If  so,  if 
a  man's  whole  career  ends  with  death,  then  I  cannot  justify 
the  existence  and  destiny  of  that  man  nor  retain  my  religious 
faith.  For  I  consider  it  is  not  enough  that  his  blundering 
life  should  be  a  gain  to  others.  The  individual  himself  must 
come  out  victor.  But  who  is  entitled  to  affirm  that  death 
ends  all?  Browning  conjectured  that  Death  might  flash  the 
truth  on  Guido,  as  the  lightning  at  blackest  night  revealed 
Naples — for  an  instant. 

"So  may  the  truth  be  flashed  out  by  one  blow, 
And  Guido  see,  one  instant,  and  be  saved. 
Else  I  avert  my  face,  not  follow  him 
Into   that  sad   obscure   sequestered   state 
Where  God  unmakes  but  to  remake  the  soul 
He  else  made  first  in  vain;  which  must  not  be."* 

^The  Ring  and  the  Book.  "The  Pope,"  2127-2132. 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  193 

It  is  a  choice  of  conjectures  or  of  hypotheses;  and  to  me,  as 
to  Browning,  the  hypothesis  of  the  ultimate  failure  of  Divine 
Power  and  Goodness  is  more  improbable  than  that  of  human 
life  continued  after  death.  The  merely  natural  arena  of  this 
short,  fragile,  changing,  restless  life  seems  to  me  to  be  too 
small  to  decide  issues  that  are  moral,  and  the  destiny  of 
beings  whose  nature  is  spiritual.  Death  may  be  a  mere  inci- 
dent in  their  history,  a  natural  event  and  nothing  more;  and 
a  quite  different  kind  of  environment  may  be  necessary  to  elicit 
and  give  play  to  the  possibilities  of  spirit. 

But  I  must  leave  aside  the  problem  of  immortality  for  the 
present,  and  merely  deny  the  right  to  assume  the  finality  of 
death  and  the  consequent  failure  of  the  divine  purpose. 

So  far  we  have  referred  only  to  the  cases  in  which  the  bad 
will  is  persistent  and  the  evil  ways  last  till  the  life  that  follows 
them  sinks  below  the  horizon  out  of  our  sight.  But  what  is  to 
be  said  of  those  other  human  lives  in  which  we  cannot  but  dis- 
cern a  complete  change — sorrow  and  bitter  repentance  for  the 
past,  a  rededication  for  the  future?  There  the  evil  is  not  only 
overcome  and  deleted  but  made  into  a  stepping-stone  of  the 
new  life.  Its  deceptiveness  and  falsity  have  been  exposed.  It 
is  not  possible  to  deny  that  both  men  and  nations  learn  thor- 
oughly only  when  they  learn  through  experience.  Indeed, 
we  are  often  tempted  to  believe  that  nothing  less  than  the 
bitterness  of  the  unworthy  life  can  convince  man  of  the 
wrong  he  is  doing  his  rational  nature  by  his  pursuit  of  bad 
purposes. 

Now,  this  fact  throws  light  upon  the  nature  of  moral  evil. 
Left  to  work  itself  out  and  ripen,  it  will  prove  to  be  self- 
contradictory  and  ultimately  self-deleting.  The  rational 
nature,  the  law  of  whose  activities  is  to  seek  to  realize  what  it 
values  as  good,  finds  in  evil  a  false  good.  Evil  never  tempted 
anyone  unless  it  disguised  itself.  Man  has  never  willed  to 
bring  about  what  he  recognizes  as  dead  loss.  The  nature  of 
evil  is  thus  to  make  itself  impossible.  Not  only  is  moral  evil 
capable  of  being  overcome,  and  of  being  supplanted  by  the  op- 
posite good,  it  is  converted  into  it.    The  impulse  towards  what 


194  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

is  wrong  is  turned  into  distrust  and  hatred  of  that  wrong,  and 
into  a  desire  to  serve  the  right  more  faithfully.  The  same 
passions  and  powers  are  turned  to  an  opposite  purpose.  Moral 
evil  can  thus  be  turned  completely  against  itself ;  and  this  truth 
as  to  the  nature  of  evil  remains,  though  the  change  may  occur 
only  rarely. 

At  first  sight  the  good  may  seem  to  be  capable  of  being  de- 
feated in  the  same  way.  But  this  is  not  the  case.  No  doubt 
the  good  purpose  is  often  frustrated  and  the  good  act  often 
seems  to  leave  things  as  they  were.  But  the  moral  efFect  of  the 
volition  and  the  deed  are  not  lost  upon  the  doer.  He  has 
gained  by  his  resolve,  and  is  the  better  man  for  his  effort. 
Never  does  the  moral  good  fail.  Far  less  does  it  negate  itself, 
disappointing  the  agent  who  does  the  good  act  by  proving 
empty  or  delusory.  And  this  is  one  of  the  main  grounds  why 
the  emphasis  thrown  upon  the  hazard  and  hardship  of  the 
moral  life  is  misleading.  There  is  present  in  every  good  a 
necessity  that  cannot  be  turned  aside  or  overcome.  It  is  that 
good  results  shall  follow  efforts  after  the  good;  that  character 
is  built  up ;  that  there  is  positive  moral  advance  on  the  part  of 
the  agent.  In  a  sense,  there  is  neither  hazard  nor  hardship. 
The  moral  gain  is  certain.  It  is  inevitable.  All  the  powers  of 
darkness  resist  it  in  vain.  And,  unless  the  standard  of  value 
is  wrong,  no  hardship  can  be  affirmed  in  learning  goodness 
any  more  than  in  any  other  progressive  effort.  The  diffi- 
culty of  doing  what  is  right  may  be  real  and  very  great,  but 
the  attempt  is  a  joy.  I  cannot  pity  anyone  for  trying  to 
be  good,  however  "arduous"  and  unrelenting  "reality" 
may  be. 

It  is  in  this  invincible  positive  character  of  moral  good  that 
the  contrast  between  good  and  evil,  or  rather,  between  the  good 
and  the  bad  man,  is  most  manifest.  The  good  man  acts  more 
and  more  consistently  with  his  own  rational  nature,  and  in 
accordance  with  the  scheme  to  which  he  belongs.  He  goes 
from  strength  to  strength ;  and  that  the  conditions  of  perma- 
nent well-being  are  at  his  back  becomes  more  and  more  con- 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  195 

clusively  evident.  But  evil  tends  to  wipe  itself  out — to  demon- 
strate its  futility.  Some  kinds  of  ill-conduct  destroy  the  physi- 
cal conditions  of  life.  The  putrescence  in  other  cases  seems 
confined  to  the  soul — whose  sympathies  become  sluggish,  and 
whose  ends  become  ever  narrower  and  meaner  and  more  selfish. 

Moral  evil,  or  wrong-doing,  is  the  wrong  use  of  gifts  that 
are  good.  It  is  a  turning  of  them  against  themselves.  And 
the  fact  that  it  is  thus  intrinsically  self-contradictory,  so  far 
from  justifying  it,  leaves  it  self-condemned.  It  is  never  justi- 
fied. When  by  its  failure  it  warns,  when  having  learnt  its 
lesson  a  nation  or  an  individual  devotes  itself  with  new  resolve 
to  good  ends,  the  evil,  the  perverse  activity  of  the  bad  will,  has 
already  passed  away. 

If  the  difficulties  of  religious  faith  are  to  be  met,  it  is  not  by 
denying  the  reality  or  lessening  the  significance  of  evil,  but  by 
comprehending  its  nature.  In  its  own  negative  fashion,  by  its 
own  self-contradictoriness,  evil  also  bears  witness  to  the  divine 
government  of  the  world — a  government  which  permits  and 
sustains,  and  in  the  end  furnishes  the  force  that  declares  itself 
in  the  spiritual  enterprise  of  mankind.  It  is  not  an  easy  opti- 
mism that  can  maintain  the  final  triumph  of  what  is  best.  On 
the  contrary,  it  is  the  conception  of  a  will  which,  by  making 
the  well-being  of  mankind  its  end,  has  challenged  all  the 
powers  of  evil. 

Our  own  nature's  bent  is  towards  goodness :  it  is  only  beings 
endowed  richly,  endowed,  that  is  to  say,  with  the  gifts  of  the 
spirit,  that  can  do  what  is  morally  right  or  wrong.  To  be 
able  to  err  and  do  wrong  is  a  trust  and  responsibility  beyond 
the  reach  of  the  animal ;  and  the  world  in  which  man  is  called 
upon  and  given  the  opportunity  of  using  his  gifts,  supports  and 
rewards  their  right  use,  and  puts  obstacles  in  the  way  of  the 
evil-doer  by  exposing  the  ruinous  folly  of  his  ways  of  life.  The 
world  in  its  own  way  shows  that  the  purposes  of  God  are  those 
of  a  Love  that  is  perfect,  and  although  they  are  not  always 
seen  to  triumph  in  the  lives  of  men,  they  are  never  seen  de- 
feated.    Never  has  anyone  been  sorry  for  having  tried  to  do 


196  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

what  seemed  right  or  mourned  over  his  attempted  obedience 
to  the  will  of  God.     If  it  cannot  be  said  that 

"The    evil   is   null,   is   nought,    is   silence   implying   sound," 

it  may  be  maintained  that 

"There  shall  never  be  one  lost  good!     What  was,  shall  live 
as  before"; 

and  it  may  even  be  added  that 

"What  was  good  shall  be  good,  with,  for  evil,  so  much  good 

more." 
"All  we  have  willed  or  hoped  or  dreamed  of  good  shall  exist; 
Not  its  semblance,  but  itself;  no  beauty,  nor  good,  nor  power 
Whose  voice  has  gone  forth,  but  each  survives  for  the  melo- 
dist 
When  eternity  affirms  the  conception  of  an  hour."  ^ 

That  the  power  and  love  of  God  are  unlimited  remains  after 
every  test  the  most  reasonable  and  probable  hypothesis. 

^Browning's  Abt   Vogler. 


LECTURE  XV 

THE  ABSOLUTE  AND  THE   NATURAL  WORLD 

Before  moving  on,  it  may  be  well  to  mark  the  main  stages  of 
the  way  we  have  travelled. 

Lord  Gifford  desired  to  apply  the  methods  of  the  natural 
sciences  to  religion  with  a  view  to  proving  the  possibility  of 
establishing  what  he  called  "Natural  Religion."  Certain  diffi- 
culties were  encountered  which  arose  from  the  fact  that  the 
methods  of  the  sciences  differ.  They  vary  according  to  the 
subject  matter.  This  difficulty  seemed  to  be  more  serious  when 
the  subject  was  that  of  religion.  But  in  the  last  resort  it  was 
found  that  there  is,  in  truth,  only  one  method  of  knowing. 
The  sciences,  philosophy,  even  ordinary  thought,  are  engaged  in 
forming  and  testing  conceptions  or  hypotheses  in  the  light  of 
which  facts  are  disclosed  and  become  intelligible.  And  the 
hypothesis  with  which  philosophy  is  engaged  is  proffered  by  it 
as  the  ultimate  explanatory  principle  of  all  reality.  It  is  the 
Absolute.  And  the  relation  of  the  Absolute  of  philosophy  to 
the  God  of  religion  is  one  of  the  problems  we  must  consider 
hereafter. 

We  then  enquired  into  the  nature  of  religion.  We  found  it 
to  be  man's  refuge  from  the  disappointments  of  finitude,  and, 
above  all,  from  the  shortcomings  which  he  discovers  in  himself. 
Over  against  the  limitations,  weaknesses,  failures,  there  stands 
for  the  religious  spirit  the  fulness  of  infinitude,  strength  and 
security.  "Over  against,"  however,  is  a  misleading  phrase,  for 
religion  places  a  divine  plenitude  in  man's  own  reach.  It  unites 
God  and  man,  and  unites  them  so  intimately,  as  it  would  seem, 
that  a  man's  very  self  appears  to  cease  to  count.     His  life  is 

197 


198  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

not  his  own.  It  is  not  he  that  lives,  but  his  God  lives  in 
him. 

But  the  claims  of  religion,  thus  uncompromisingly  urged, 
seemed  to  be  incompatible  with  man's  moral  life.  For  it  can 
hardly  be  questioned  that  one  of  the  essential  conditions  of 
morality  is  the  responsibility  of  the  moral  agent  for  his  actions, 
as  the  results  of  his  own  choice  and  the  free  expression  of  his 
personality.  Man's  moral  destiny  is  exclusively  in  his  own 
hands.  It  is  for  him,  and  for  him  only  and  alone,  to  make  or 
to  mar  his  moral  character.  Neither  man  nor  God  himself 
can  do  this  for,  or  instead  of,  him.  This  moral  demand  we 
stated  as  uncompromisingly  as  the  apparently  opposite  demand 
of  religion. 

In  the  next  place  we  sought,  and  I  believe  found,  a  way  of 
reconciling  religion  and  morality.  Morality  is  the  process  of 
realizing  the  principle  of  religion.  It  is  religion  in  practice, 
and  only  as  religion  in  practice  is  morality  at  its  highest  and 
best,  or  religion  itself  a  reality. 

To  effect  this  reconciliation  the  ordinary  view  both  of  re- 
ligion and  of  morality  had  to  be  modified.  Religion  ceases  to 
be  a  satisfaction  that  brings  idle  rest;  the  rest  it  brings  is  that 
of  devoted  activity  in  the  service  of  a  Perfection  with  which 
man  has  unreservedly  identified  his  own  well-being.  Morality 
ceases  to  be  the  hopeless  pursuit  of  an  ever-receding  ought  to 
be,  and  becomes  a  process  of  continued,  successive  attainment. 
Every  good  act  becomes,  in  turn,  an  inspiration  to  a  better, 
and  brings  insight  into  wider  purposes.  From  this  point  of 
view  one  would  hear  as  little  of  the  hardships  and  hazards  of 
the  moral  life  as  we  do  in  the  case  of  intellectual  progress. 
Morality  is  continued  self-realization  through  self-sacrifice  — 
the  consciousness  of  sacrificing  the  self  in  doing  one's  duty  being 
most  evanescent,  and  its  illusoriness  easily  exposed.  It  is  the 
way  to  the  moral  act,  not  the  act  itself,  that  is  sometimes, 
though  by  no  means  always,  rough.  And  there  are  lives  whose 
dedication  to  the  Highest,  their  God,  is  so  complete  that  He 
is  with  them  at  every  step  of  the  journey. 

We  were  then  confronted  with  the  problem  of  evil — both 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  199 

natural  and  spiritual;  for  there  can  be  no  denial  of  the  fact 
that  observation  of  the  ways  of  men  shows  them  to  be  often 
irreligious  and  secular,  even  when  not  immoral.  It  is  not 
everyone  who  is  in  pursuit  of  moral  goodness,  or  who  is  de- 
signedly converting  the  circumstances  of  his  daily  life  into 
means  of  moral  growth.  On  the  contrary  there  are  extremities 
of  wickedness  and  of  sufiEering,  which  it  would  be  hard  indeed 
to  justify,  if  we  considered  them  as  specific  parts  of  a  deliberate 
plan.  There  has  seemed,  therefore,  to  be  no  option,  except  to 
say  that  there  are  "unplanned"  occurrences  or  "contingencies," 
things  which  have  crept  into  the  scheme  unpermitted,  or,  at 
least,  unforeseen.  But  it  is  harder  still  to  justify  them  (or 
anything  else)  except  as  parts  of  a  plan.  So  we  rejected  this 
very  obvious  way  of  running  away  from  the  difficulty.  Nor 
was  it  lack  of  acquaintance  with  pain,  or  sorrow,  or,  alas,  sin, 
that  enabled  us  to  look  the  problem  in  the  face,  and  to  seek 
for  a  place  within  the  plan  even  for  these  evils.  We  therefore 
tried  anew  to  determine  the  essential  character  of  evil. 

Natural  evil,  such  as  sickness,  pain,  bereavement,  poverty, 
absence  of  the  friendly  regard  of  neighbours,  offered  compara- 
tively little  difficulty.  Natural  good  and  evil,  we  found,  are 
not  good  or  evil  in  their  own  right.  If  the  moral  standard 
of  value  is  the  correct  standard,  then  we  must  wait  for  the 
moral  issue  of  natural  occurrences  before  calling  them  good 
or  bad. 

The  difficulty  as  to  moral  evil  is  much  more  serious.  Events 
in  the  moral  world  have  a  finality  of  character  which  natural 
events  do  not  possess.  The  good  or  the  evil  is  intrinsic.  There 
is,  as  we  say,  no  getting  over  it.  Its  existence  must  simply  be 
acknowledged.  There  were,  however,  certain  considerations 
which  prevented  the  need  of  acknowledging  its  final  triumph, 
or  its  existence  as  limiting  or  annulling  either  the  power  or  the 
goodness  of  God,  and  thereby  stultifying  religious  faith. 

{a)  First,  while  it  is  true  that  the  observation  of  the  lives 
of  men  yield  instances  in  which  the  evil  will  grows  in  power 
unto  the  end  of  the  individual's  life,  it  is  also  possible  that  the 
end  has  not  as  yet  arrived.     There  are  other  possibilities;  and 


200  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

they  may  well  seem  to  amount  to  probabilities.  It  was  pointed 
out  that  the  destiny  of  beings  whose  nature  is  spiritual  may 
be  a  matter  whose  issues  are  too  great  to  be  decided  by  and  in 
this  transitory  and  uncertain  physically  conditioned  life.  The 
absence  of  adequate  premisses  ought  to  arrest  judgment  on  the 
matter;  and  the  right  to  deny  is  in  no  way  stronger  than  the 
right  to  affirm. 

(b)  Secondly,  and  this  was  our  main  argument,  if  the  pres- 
ent world  can  be  regarded  as  a  school  of  virtue  and  if  learning 
goodness  is  worthy  of  every  sacrifice,  then  to  permit  man  to 
choose  between  right  and  wrong  (having  first  provided  him 
with  spiritual  capacity  for  making  such  a  choice;  and,  secondly, 
given  him  such  a  bent  towards  goodness  that  he  never  chooses 
evil  because  of  its  evil;  and  finally,  having  placed  him  in  a 
world  which  favours  good  conduct)  is  a  supreme  expression 
of  Divine  Love.  God  has  given  to  man  a  chance  of  attaining 
what  is  highest  and  best:  and  God's  benevolence  could  go  no 
further. 

If  these  things  are  true,  then  the  existence  of  evil  is  not 
equivalent  to  a  refutation  of  religious  faith.  We  can  still 
believe  in  the  unlimited  goodness  of  God  and  can  recognize 
the  possibility  of  evil  as  one  of  the  conditions  of  its  operation. 

These  were  the  main  conclusions  to  which  our  argument 
seemed  to  point.  We  must  now  examine  them,  and  in  par- 
ticular decide  whether  philosophic  enquiry  verily  does  in  this 
way  ratify  religious  faith  and  satisfy  its  demands.  Can  the 
Absolute  of  philosophy  be  identified  with  the  God  of  religion ; 
and  can  the  religious  needs  of  men  be  met  in  that  way?  Will 
the  intelligence  of  man  provide  what  his  heart  desires?  Can 
the  consideration  of  finite  facts  lead  to  the  knowledge  of  God? 

Our  investigation  must  set  out  from  the  consideration  of 
such  facts  and  events.  We  seek  to  discover  that  which  explains 
finite  things  and  shows  them  real;  for  they  are  real,  though 
not  in  virtue  of  themselves.  In  the  first  place,  the  isolated 
finite  fact  is  a  figment.  It  is  in  relation  to  other  facts,  and 
only  in  that  relation,  that  facts  act  and  are;  and  it  is  only  in 
their  activities  that  they  reveal  and  actualize  themselves.     It 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  201 

cannot  be  too  often  or  emphatically  affirmed  that  things  are 
what  they  do.  Now  this  relational  process  could  conceivably 
be  either  endless  and  therefore  inconclusive;  or  it  could  culmi- 
nate in  the  affirmation  of  that  which  is  at  once  real  in  virtue 
of  its  own  nature  and  that  from  which  all  else  derives  its 
reality.  I  mean  that  all  objects  and  events  when  examined 
would  in  that  case  point  to  it  as  the  ultimate  real,  from  which 
they  are  derived  and  only  in  relation  to  which  they  have  them- 
selves meaning,  value  or  reality. 

The  first  course  is,  in  practice,  adopted  by  the  agnostic.  He 
despairs  of  knowing  the  self-justifying  real,  and  he  recognizes 
that,  in  consequence,  no  part  of  his  knowledge  has  uncondi- 
tional validity  and  finality.  His  attitude,  if  he  could  maintain 
it,  is  that  of  one  who  refrains  from  committing  himself.  But 
such  an  attitude  cannot  be  maintained.  At  the  heart  of  every 
person's  experience  there  are  principles  which  are  taken  to  be 
true.     At  least,  they  are  not  questioned. 

But  while  a  cognitive  attitude  which  can  say  nothing  except 
"I  don't  know"  is  not  practically  or  theoretically  defensible, 
there  are,  on  the  other  hand,  varying  degrees  of  certitude.  And, 
in  one  sense  at  least,  the  degree  of  certainty  that  is  required 
grows  as  we  move  from  science  to  philosophy  and  from  philos- 
ophy to  religion.  The  scientific  man  can  afford  to  be  less 
reserved  than  the  others  in  his  confession  that  his  ultimate 
principles  are  only  his  best  guesses,  and  that  his  laws  are  merely 
hypotheses,  and  apply  only  to  a  limited  region,  or  to  some 
single  aspect  of  objects.  But  the  philosopher  stakes  the  whole 
of  his  mental  life  on  his  doctrine.  The  failure  of  a  funda- 
mental philosophical  conviction  brings  into  experience  universal 
chaos. 

But  the  ruin  that  the  breakdown  of  a  philosophy  brings  to 
the  intellectual  life  is  in  its  turn  far  less  complete  than  that 
which  follows  the  loss  of  religious  faith.  There  is  a  refuge 
in  the  former  case  in  the  field  of  practice:  it  is  possible,  by 
narrowing  one's  life,  to  silence  the  questionings  of  the  intelli- 
gence. But  in  the  second  case,  that  of  religion,  no  way  of 
escape  is  left:    in  no  direction  is  it  worth  while  for  the  spirit 


202  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

of  man  to  seek  to  move.  Conviction  must  be  complete ;  faith 
must  in  every  practical  sense  be  equivalent  to  certainty.  The 
impatience  of  the  religious  spirit  with  those  w^ho  seem  to  place 
(as  I  have  done)  the  faith  of  religion  on  the  same  level  as  the 
h3'potheses  of  a  science,  is  quite  intelligible.  Religion  demands 
certainty  that  it  can  trust;  philosophy  offers  what  is,  at  best, 
only  the  most  reasonable  conjecture,  the  likeliest  guess.  And 
it  would  thus  appear  that  the  demands  of  "the  heart"  '  cannot 
be  met  by  the  use  of  the  intelligence.  A  vast  difference  seems 
to  separate  the  conception  of  the  whole  or  Absolute  as  the  ulti- 
mate focus  of  all  finite  things  which  philosophy  offers,  and  the 
conception  of  a  Divine  Being  to  whose  goodness  and  power 
there  is  no  limit,  which  religion  demands.  We  have,  on  the 
one  hand,  a  philosophical  certainty  that  looks  very  empty,  seeing 
that  it  only  afSrms  the  wholeness  of  the  universe  and  the  ulti- 
mate dependence  of  things  on  an  Absolute  of  which  nothing 
except  its  absoluteness  is  known ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  we 
have  an  ample  and  satisfying  but  utterly  defenceless  religious 
faith.  Can  they  not  be  brought  together  and  made  supple- 
mentary? There  is  one  sense  in  which  philosophy  offers  more 
than  religion  wants.  The  religious  spirit  can  be  content  to 
escape  from  the  world  for  the  sake  of  being  one  with  its  God. 
It  has  no  direct  concern  in  anything  except  the  redemption  of 
the  soul,  and  once  the  assurance  is  reached  that  the  sin  has 
been  forgiven,  the  sin  passes  out  of  sight,  and  is  as  if  it  had 
never  been.  But  the  whole  or  Absolute  which  philosophy 
affirms  must  be  all-inclusive  and  must  carry  the  past  with  it. 
There  can  be  no  reality  of  any  kind  outside  of  the  scheme. 

This  means,  in  the  first  place,  that  there  can  be  no  con- 
tingencies, not  even  in  detail.  The  links  that  connect  the  detail 
with  the  whole  scheme  are  there,  whether  we  find  them  or  not, 
if  the  conception  of  the  harmonious  whole  which  reason  seems 
to  demand  is  valid.  And  unless  we  can  presuppose  an  order 
that  is  universal  we  can  affirm  it  securely  nowhere.  Every  loss 
must  be  convertible  into  gain  by  the  alchemy  of  the  spirit,  and 

^I  am  using  the  word  "heart"  in  its  usual  sense,  which,  so  far  as  I  know, 
has  never  been  clearly  stated.  In  this  connection,  however,  the  word  "heart" 
seems  to  stand  for  the  whole  man. 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  203 

every  tragedy  must  on  this  view  contribute  to  the  triumph  of 
order  over  contingency  and  of  good  over  evil ;  otherwise  we 
cannot  speak  of  the  Universe  as  a  whole  or  of  the  Absolute  as 
its  principle.  It  is  one  thing  to  admit  that  we  do  not  know  a 
law,  and  another  to  affirm  that  no  law  exists.  We  do  the  latter 
in  affirming  "contingencies." 

In  the  next  place  the  all-inclusive  Absolute  which  philosophy 
establishes,  and,  indeed,  which  thought  presupposes,  must  be 
such  as  to  cherish  and  maintain,  and  in  nowise  obliterate,  or 
obscure,  or  extinguish  the  differences  of  the  elements  which 
have  a  place  in  it.  It  must  be  adequate  to  the  Universe  for 
which  it  is  an  experience — adequate  to  its  variety  as  well  as 
to  its  unity.  And  the  universe  is  wonderfully  rich  in  meaning 
and  beauty  and  spiritual  worth  could  we  but  escape  from  our 
littleness  and  let  it  inundate  the  soul.  The  poet  helps  us  at 
times,  and  with  his  aid  we  catch  a  glimpse  of  the  world's 
splendour.  Then  the  spring-wind  reveals  itself  as  a  dancing 
psaltress  passing  over  the  wintry  earth's  breast  to  waken  it, 
and  is  much  more  than  a  senseless  gust. 

"The  herded  pines  commune  and  have  deep  thoughts, 
A  secret  they  assemble  to  discuss." 

They  are  not  merely  a  group  of  trees  to  the  poet ;  and  he  helps 
us  to  rejoice  in  nature's  munificence.  Science  comes,  too,  with 
its  steady  light.  And  the  artist  in  colour  and  form  indicates 
— for  he  can  do  little  more — the  details  of  the  beauty  of  natural 
objects  in  new  ways.  Nor  must  we  think  that  poetry  is  pure 
invention.  It  is  part  of  the  nature  of  things  which  the  poet 
sets  free.  There  is  beauty  ever>^where,  not  only  in  the  butter- 
fly's wing,  but  at  the  very  heart  of  the  pebble.  Finally,  the 
musician  intervenes.  He  brings  with  him,  perhaps,  the  most 
miraculous  of  all  the  benevolent  intrusions  into  our  common- 
place life,  and  sets  free  an  altogether  new  feature  of  the  real. 
The  Absolute  must  not  merely  contain  these,  but  permit  them 
to  retain  within  it,  nay,  it  must  contribute,  their  distinctive 
character.  It  is  not  a  blank  sameness,  as  of  ultimate  substance 
in    which   all    differences    disappear,   that   the    conception   of 


204  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

"wholeness"  implies.     Sameness  of  this  kind  implies  impover- 
ishment:   not  inclusion,  but  exclusion.     When  it  is  attained  it 
is  found  to  be  empty;  and  being  empty,  to  have  itself  neither 
reality  nor  meaning.     The  finite  objects  within  the  Absolute 
whole  must  be  themselves  expressions  of  it.     There  is  no  least 
evidence  of  the  existence  of  the  Absolute  except  in  that  which 
it  furnishes  itself  and  as  it  operates  in  finite  objects.     They 
are  processes  of  the  Absolute,  and  the  Absolute  is  the  process, 
or  the  constant  creative  activity,  which  appears  to  us  as  the 
fixed  order  of  the  scheme  of  things.     For  the  static  character 
of  objects  is,  I  believe,  an  illusion.     Their  apparent  fixity  is 
that  of  an  operation  ever  carried  on  in  accordance  with  law. 
The  scientific  man  accounts  for  an  object  by  discovering  its 
law;    and    a   law   is   the   mode    of   operation    of    a   universal. 
Physics  knows   no   reality   except   some   form   of   energy,    and 
nature  is  for  science  the  scene  of   its  transformations.     And 
when  we  pass  from  inanimate  objects  to  living  things,  and  from 
living  things  onwards  to  beings  that  live  the  life  of  reason, 
and   have   cognitive,   aesthetic   and   volitional   experiences,    the 
evidences   of   process    accumulate.      It    is   obvious   that    when 
rational  activities  cease,  nothing  remains;  even  their  objects, 
whether  they  be  beauty,  goodness  or  truth,  pass  away.     The 
facts  of  the  world  of  spirit  are  ways  in  which  spirit  acts,  and 
spirit  is  what  it  does.     When  spirit  does  not  act,  nothing  spir- 
itual can  exist.     Truth  does  not  exist  as  an  entity,  nor  does 
goodness,  nor  beauty.     To  speak  of  them  as  taken  up  into  the 
absolute,  or  contained  in  it,  or  as  transformed  and  transcended 
on  admission  into  it,  is  to  attribute  to  them  an  actuality  sep- 
arate from  spirit  which  they  do  not  possess,  and  to  forget  that 
they  are  its  processes.     They  are,   I   repeat,  the  Absolute   in 
process   of   self-revelation ;    and    its   existence   consists    in    this 
process  of  self-manifestation  in  finite  objects. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  spiritual  manifestations  of  the  Absolute 
as  if  they  were  other  than  its  expressions  in  the  constant  pro- 
cesses of  nature.  But  it  cannot  any  longer  be  doubted  that, 
account  for  it  as  we  may,  mankind  is  as  much  a  natural  growth 
as  a  forest  of  pines.     Spiritual  activities  are  not  possible  to  man 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  205 

except  in  correspondence  with  a  natural  environment ;  and  these 
borrow  characteristics  from  their  interaction.  More  accurately, 
perhaps,  we  might  say  that  the  kinship  of  nature  and  spirit  is 
the  primary  fact.  The  distinction  between  them  is  that  of 
aspects  or  elements  of  the  same  real.  Morality  derives  its 
worth  from  its  eliciting  a  higher  meaning  and  use  from  secular 
objects,  and  the  practical  trials  and  tests  of  a  religious  faith 
are  its  defence  and  strength  and  security.  The  environment 
has  its  own  function  to  fulfil;  it  participates  in  the  spiritual 
process.  The  natural  region  is  a  stage  or  degree  of  the  self- 
manifestation  of  spirit.  Some  of  the  attributes  of  the  indwell- 
ing reality  are  expressed  and  realized  in  it.  Power  we  can 
discern  and  a  power  that,  unlike  our  own,  is  creative.  The 
power  which  we  can  exercise  over  objects  is  extraordinarily  lim- 
ited. In  the  last  resort  we  can  only  move  them  into  and  out 
of  contact  with  one  another,  and  then  leave  them  to  operate 
upon  one  another.  So  far  from  calling  them  into  being,  we 
cannot  even  alter  their  qualities:  we  can  only  change  their 
position  in  space. 

Besides  a  power  quite  other  than  our  own,  we  can  discern 
in  the  natural  scheme  something  of  the  resources  of  infinite 
wisdom,  or  evidences  of  perfect  intelligence ;  and  we  cannot 
cite  the  beauty  of  the  natural  world  or  the  perfection  of  its 
order,  or  the  variety  and  greatness  of  its  uses,  without  recog- 
nizing something  that  we  can  hardly  distinguish  from  the 
limitless  benevolence  of  a  munificent  will.  But  it  is  not  merely 
prejudice  that  attributes  the  highest  value  and  significance  to 
the  spiritual  manifestations  of  the  real — as  when  it  appears  as 
self-consciousness  in  nature's  highest  product,  namely,  man. 
In  the  light  of  man's  nature  the  whole  scheme  must  be  rein- 
terpreted. 

"Man,   once   descried,   imprints   for   ever 
His   presence    on    all    lifeless   things:   the   winds 
Are  henceforth  voices,   wailing  or   a  shout, 
A  querulous  mutter  or  a  quick  gaj'  laugh, 
Never  a  senseless  gust  now  man  is  born."  ^ 

^Browning's  '"Paracelsus." 


206  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

There  are,  it  seems  to  me,  two  series  of  reliable  conclusions 
to  which  philosophy  leads  by  its  persistent  enquiry  into  the 
nature  and  meaning  and  reality  of  finite  things.  The  first 
series  of  conclusions  relates  to  the  character  of  the  Absolute: 
the  second  series  concerns  the  nature  of  its  relations  to  its  parts, 
or  elements,  or  finite  content. 

As  to  the  nature  of  the  Absolute,  it  seems  to  be  evident  that 
it  must  contain  all  the  conditions  of  all  the  finite  phenomena. 
No  one  contends  that  the  natural  scheme  produced  itself:  it 
manifestly  points  beyond  itself  for  its  explanation.  And  as  to 
the  spiritual  capacities  that  manifest  themselves  in  the  cognitive, 
aesthetic  and  moral  activities  of  man  (like  everything  else  that 
is  to  be  found  in  him),  they  have  a  history  which  passes  beyond 
his  individual  existence.  No  one  attributes  these  capacities 
to  the  individual  himself  in  the  sense  that  he  discovered  or  in- 
vented them.  Even  their  social  origin  is  only  secondary.  They 
have  been  at  the  making  of  society,  and  are,  in  fact,  forms  of 
the  real,  and  have  come  to  man  as  a  gift.  It  is  only  the  use 
made  of  them  that  belongs  to  the  individual.  These  spiritual 
qualities  were,  at  one  time,  attributed  to  matter:  but  now  it 
is  seen  that  matter  does  not  contain  the  conditions  and  cannot 
produce  them.  That  which  is  spiritual  can  have  no  adequate 
source  except  in  that  which  is  itself  spiritual.  The  Absolute 
therefore  must  be  spiritual.  The  process  of  its  self-revelation 
in  the  Universe  is  a  spiritual  process.  Nature  is  but  the  earlier 
and  less  complete  stage  of  that  self-revelation.  Man,  as  spirit 
or  as  a  self-conscious,  free  being,  making  for  perfection — man 
at  his  best  is  a  truer  and  fuller  revelation.  A  perfect  man  were 
the  incarnated  God.  This  is  the  truth  to  which  Christianity 
bears  witness.  The  doctrine  is  undisguisedly  and  thoroughly 
anthropomorphic.  Its  God  must  therefore  be  a  person  or  self- 
conscious  individual  to  whom  there  is  nothing  which  is  finally 
strange  or  alien.  Spirit  that  is  not  individual  means  nothing. 
But  individuality  implies  a  more  intimate  and  deep  relation- 
ship between  the  Absolute  and  its  finite  appearances  than  is 
conveyed  in  the  phrases  usually  employed  to  express  it.  It  is 
not  enough  to  say  that  the  Absolute  contains  finite  facts;  nor 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  207 

even  that  it  transmutes  them  by  relating  them  to  one  another 
through  its  own  unity.  Facts  are  not  first  given  as  isolated 
and  then  linked  together  in  a  system.  They  are  not  at  one  time 
separate  from,  and  at  another  taken  up  into,  the  Absolute. 
The  Absolute  permanently  sustains  them.  But  to  regard  God 
as  a  Being  which  somehow  sustains  the  different  modes  of 
finite  existence  without  implicating  itself  in  their  destiny,  is 
also  inadequate.  If  we  admit  the  spiritual  character  of  the 
power  that  expresses  itself  in  the  Universe,  we  at  the  same 
time  admit  its  individuality  and  its  self-consciousness:  if  we 
admit  its  self-conscious  individuality,  we  admit  that  which  is 
for  itself  and  gives  everything  a  turn  inwards  as  subjective 
experience,  and,  at  the  same  time  and  for  the  same  reason,  that 
which  finds  itself  everywhere  and  is  veritably  omnipresent. 
But  no  purely  monotheistic  conception  can  meet  these  require- 
ments: not  even  that  of  a  creator  who  projects  its  products 
and  then  lets  them  be.  Self-consciousness  inextricably  entangles 
the  individual  in  its  object.  The  self-conscious  being  is  imma- 
nent in  his  world.  Every  discovery  of  the  meaning  or  of  the 
use  of  an  object  is  a  refutation  of  first  appearances.  For  the 
object  at  first  appears  to  be  purely  external  and  exclusive.  It 
is  there;  I  as  subject  am  here.  But  in  the  degree  in  which  it 
is  known,  its  oneness  with  myself  by  which  it  both  enriches 
me  and  acquires  meaning  and  value,  becomes  more  and  more 
indisputable.  My  world,  in  fact,  thinks  and  wills  in  me,  be- 
cause I  have  overcome  its  strangeness.  Nevertheless  even  the 
idea  of  immanence  is  inadequate  to  express  the  relations  of 
the  Absolute  to  its  elements.  For  the  Absolute  not  merely 
dw^ells  in  their  midst  like  the  peace  at  the  depths  of  an  ocean 
whose  surface  is  storm-tossed.  The  Absolute  which  philos- 
ophy affirms,  is  one  with  them.  It  shares  in  the  activities 
of  the  finite  object,  and  is  a  doer  and  sufferer  in  the  world's 
life. 

I  have  repeatedly  urged  that  if  we  desire  to  know  what  an 
object  is  we  must  observe  what  it  does.  In  order  to  bring  out 
the  whole  of  its  characters  we  must  vary  the  environment  by 
reference  to  which  it  acts.     For  all  the  actions  of  an  object 


208  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

are  reactions — a  solitary  object  would  show  no  activity,  and, 
in  fact,  never  be  known.  To  him,  then,  who  would  know  God, 
the  answer  of  philosophy  would  be :  Observe  this  never-resting 
Universe  as  it  moves  from  change  to  change,  nor  forget  the 
troubled,  tragic,  sin-stained,  shameless  elements  in  the  world 
of  man,  and  you  will  find  God  working  his  purpose  and  mani- 
festing himself  through  it  all.  Identify  him  with  the  power 
that  sustains  the  processes  of  this  natural-spiritual  world  and 
you  identify  him  with  that  which,  as  we  have  seen,  makes  for 
fuller  spiritual  excellence.  You  identify  him  with  something 
that  is  better  than  any  static  perfection. 

But,  it  will  be  answered,  to  identify  the  Divine  Being  with 
the  Absolute  of  philosophy  and  the  Absolute  of  philosophy  with 
the  world  process  is  to  represent  the  Divine  Being  himself  as 
passing  from  one  imperfect  form  of  existence  to  another.  Re- 
ligion, it  has  been  admitted,  demands  perfection  in  the  object 
of  its  devotion.  How  can  such  a  conception,  then,  meet  its 
requirements?  The  answer  is  twofold.  In  the  first  place  we 
might  examine  the  static  conception ;  in  the  second  place,  we 
might  ask  whether  there  can  be  movement,  not  only  from  im- 
perfection to  imperfection — the  pursuit  of  a  receding  ideal  with 
which  ethical  teaching  has  made  us  familiar — but  from  per- 
fection to  perfection,  a  movement  which  is  positive  attainment 
all  the  way.  Can  the  perfect  be  for  ever  radiating  forth  new 
perfections  ? 

As  to  the  static  conception  of  the  perfect,  I  have  already 
indicated  how  changelessness  means  absolute  inactivity;  and 
how  inactivity  can  be  attributed  to  nothing  real  which  we  know, 
and  least  of  all  to  spiritual  reality.  For  it  to  be  at  all  is  to  be 
operative,  outgoing,  losing  itself  to  find  itself  immersed  in  the 
Universe  and  returning  to  itself  through  the  Universe.  I 
cannot  call  that  which  does  nothing — which  for  ever  stands 
aloof  from  the  world-process  in  eternal  fixity — God.  Such 
a  God  could  not  at  least  be  a  God  of  Love,  for  love  identifies 
the  lover  and  the  loved.  Love  cannot  stand  aloof:  love  lives 
in  the  life  of  its  object  and  shares  its  fate.  Even  the  isolation 
of  the  moral  agent  does  not  shut  out  love.    It  shares  the  sorrow. 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  209 

though  not  the  guilt,  of  ill-doing,  and  the  joy  of  righteous 
living. 

Bearing  in  mind  what  I  have  tried  to  prove,  namely,  that  the 
Universe  which  makes  for  fuller  spiritual  goodness  is  the  best 
possible,  I  cannot  hesitate  to  identify  the  God  of  religion  and 
the  Absolute  of  philosophy.  Nevertheless,  as  absolute  self- 
consciousness  and  as  knowing  the  end  from  the  beginning,  God 
is  more  than  the  world-process.  That  process  fulfils  his  pur- 
pose. But  God,  as  having  purposed  the  process  from  the  begin- 
ning, or  as  not  acting  blindly  not  knowing  what  he  doeth,  is 
greater  than  and  transcends  the  Universe.  He  is  already  per- 
fect and  possesses  the  future,  for  it  is  his  Will  which  is  being 
realized  in  the  world. 

All  the  same  there  is  movement  from  purpose  to  fulfilment, 
or  from  possibility  to  actuality,  and  the  perfection  of  the  instant 
may  be  the  condition  and  inspiration  of  a  new  perfection. 
Something  of  that  kind  seems  to  me  to  be  presented  by  the  spir- 
itual history  of  man.  Nothing  in  the  world  can  be  better  than 
the  doing  of  a  right  deed.  In  its  own  way,  it  is  obedience  to 
and  realization  of  the  absolute  law  of  goodness;  nevertheless  it 
is  a  stepping-stone  to  some  better  action  still.  A  wider  view  of 
duty  ensues,  or  a  deeper  and  more  joyous  loyalty.  Morality  is 
acquirement  all  the  way,  and,  in  spite  of  the  limited  range  of 
every  human  action,  in  so  far  as  what  is  right  is  done,  there  is 
movement  from  perfection  to  perfection.  Right  actions  are 
perfect  actions  in  their  place,  provided  they  elicit  the  best  that 
the  circumstances  permit.  They  are  often  done  by  very  im- 
perfect men,  and  still  they  stand  unstained.  Yet  every  such 
action  is  a  stepping-stone  only:  once  done  it  yields  its  result 
in  the  character  of  the  agent,  and  he  carries  that  result  within 
himx  ever  afterwards  as  an  element  of  his  personality  and  the 
condition  of  further  service.  And  every  stage  has  its  own 
worth.  The  seed  of  a  living  plant  may  be  perfect,  so  may  its 
bud  and  its  flower  and  its  fruit.  Its  history  is  not  the  story 
of  a  movement  from  failure  to  failure.  And  it  seems  to  me 
that  we  can  say  the  same  thing  of  the  succession  of  the  stages 
of  the  spiritual  life.    Looking  back,  it  is  true,  makes  any  stage 


210  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

preparatory — a  thing  essentially  imperfect  in  itself;  but  all 
the  same,  every  stage  has  its  own  character,  and  had  its  right 
to  be,  and  was  justified  as  it  stood. 

I  admit  that  the  conception  of  a  moving  perfection,  or  of 
God  as  a  being  who  ever  expresses  himself  in  new  perfec- 
tions, has  its  difficulties;  but,  unlike  those  of  the  conception 
of  a  static  Deity,  they  are  not  insurmountable.  Every  least  addi- 
tion to  our  knowledge  we  welcome  as  a  lasting  attainment. 
We  accentuate  the  positive  aspect  of  the  process.  What  reasons 
have  we  for  regarding  our  moral  actions  as  failures  or  morality 
as  anything  else  than  what  is  best  of  all  in  process?  I  know 
of  none.  Our  unexamined  assumption  of  a  static  perfection, 
our  habit  of  postponing  the  triumph  of  the  life  of  spirit  to  an 
end,  which  we  have  never  attempted  to  define,  has  blinded  us 
to  the  possibility  of  a  growing  perfection  and  of  a  best  in 
process.  Still  less  have  we  taken  the  process  itself  as  the  evi- 
dence of  perfection.  And  yet  these  things  are  implied  in  the 
conception  of  spirit,  and  of  God  as  a  God  of  Love.  For  no 
one  will  for  a  moment  admit  that  love  can  stand  aloof  from 
its  object  unconcerned  by  its  fate.  The  religious  man,  like 
Enoch,  "walks  with  God."  A  light,  like  that  of  the  Shekinah, 
always  shines  upon  his  path.  He  has  no  will  of  his  own  in 
an  exclusive  sense ;  and  there  is  a  sense  in  which  not  even  his 
personality  is  any  longer  his  own.  These  are  familiar  experi- 
ences. Are  they  possible  if  God  dwells  apart  and  contemplates 
for  ever  his  own  perfection  ?  Would  they  be  possible  were 
God  the  monarchic  Ruler,  or  the  Stern  Judge  demanding  a 
quid  pro  quo  in  the  blood  of  a  redeemer  in  return  for  forgive- 
ness of  sins?  Or  are  not  all  these  conceptions  irreconcilable 
with  the  fundamental  truth  of  the  religion  of  love? 

Philosophy  has  performed  only  a  portion  of  its  task  in  show- 
ing how  the  finite  world  implies  the  Absolute.  It  must  also 
show  w^hat  necessities,  if  any,  dwell  in  the  absolute,  and  account 
for  its  eternal  outgoing  and  expression  of  itself  in  objects.  It 
is  not  only  true  that  "the  finite  world  cannot  be  conceived 
to  be  complete  and  independent,  and  that  its  existence  must 
therefore  be  referred  back  to  Gcd,"  but  also,  as  Caird  said, 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  211 

that  "in  the  nature  of  God  there  is  a  necessity  and  reason  for 
the  existence  of  the  world."  To  the  question  sometimes  asked, 
"Why  did  God  come  out  of  his  isolated  perfection  so  as  to 
complete  himself  only  through  the  medium  of  the  Universe?" 
the  answer  is  relatively  simple.  It  is  given  in  the  conception 
of  God  as  Love.  Love  ?7iust  have  an  object.  Philosophy  gives 
an  answer  which,  in  the  last  resort,  is  the  same.  Absolute- 
ness undoubtedly  implies  that  self-completeness,  that  positive 
and  commanding  relation  to  objects,  that  possession  of  its  own 
experience,  which  are  involved  in  self-consciousness.  A  self- 
conscious  being  which  has  no  object  and  does  not  possess  its 
opposite,  and  affirm  its  unity  in  terms  of  it,  is  impossible. 
Hence  an  Absolute  without  a  world  is  empty  nothingness,  just 
as  a  world  without  the  Absolute  is  impossible.  Nature  is  the 
experience,  the  living  operation  of  the  Absolute,  and  the  Abso- 
lute is  not  only  omnipresent  in  it,  but  real  in  virtue  of  it.  It 
is  as  manifesting  itself  that  the  Absolute,  on  its  part,  lives  and 
moves  and  has  its  being. 

The  religious  consciousness,  as  we  have  seen,  may  almost  be 
said  to  consist  in  this  conviction  of  the  omnipresence  of  what 
is  most  divine,  namely,  perfect  and  unlimited  Love.  Those 
who  can  rise  to  the  sublime  attitude  of  Wordsworth  find  no 
difficulty  in  the  conception.  It  is  in  no  exaggerated  mood  of 
emotional  exaltation  that  he  found  an  "Active  Principle" 


"Subsist 
In  all  things,  in  all  natures;  in  the  stars 
Of   azure   heaven,   the  unenduring  clouds, 
In  flower  and  tree,  in  every  pebbly  stone 
That  paves  the  brooks  ..." 


and  even  where  it  is  "least  respected,  its  most  apparent  home, 
the  human  mind." 

Wordsworth  affirmed  this  as  "a  matter  of  fact" — and  phi- 
losophy finds  in  the  conception  of  a  self-conscious  Absolute  the 
same  plain  truth.  The  erroneous  versions  of  the  world's  mean- 
ing are  the  irreligious   and   prose  versions:    not   that  of   the 


212  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

devout,  nor  that  of  the  poet,  nor  that  of  the  idealist  philosopher, 
but  the  version  of  the  plain  man.    Where 

"Moral   dignity,   and   strength   of   mind. 
Are  wanting:  and  simplicity  of  life 
And  reverence  for  one's  [him]  self:  and  last  and  best 
Confiding  thoughts,  through  love  and  fear  of  Him 
Before  whose  sight  the   troubles  of  this  world 
Are  vain,  as  billows  on  a  tossing  sea": 

in  these  cases  the  truth  may  be  hidden  for  a  time.  It  is  beyond 
the  reach  of  the  unprepared  spirit;  which  is  left  the  victim  of 
its  own  shallow  deceptions.  It  is  not  enough  that  the  world's 
harmonies  should  be  divine;  the  soul  that  can  hear  must  be 
musical.  It  is  in  the  awareness  of  this  deeper  significance  of 
the  world  and  of  life,  in  this  glimpse  of  the  essentially  spiritual 
character  of  the  commonest  experience,  that  religious  conversion 
consists.  And  it  is  not  the  language  of  exaggeration  to  speak 
of  "The  eyes  being  opened,  or  the  blind  seeing."  Ordinary 
experience  is  abstract,  and  what  is  omitted  in  our  ordinary 
moods  is  the  best,  the  most  true  and  the  most  beautiful. 

I  take  it,  then,  quite  literally,  that  the  character  of  the  rela- 
tion that  holds  between  the  Absolute  of  philosophy,  or  the  God 
of  religion,  and  the  facts  and  events  of  nature  is  most  accurately 
rendered  in  our  deeper  religious  convictions,  in  such  poetry  as 
Wordsworth's,  and  in  the  philosophic  rendering  of  it  by  our 
great  Idealists.  The  poet,  the  philosopher  and  the  religious 
man,  each  in  his  own  way,  helps  us  to  know  the  natural  world 
in  its  truth,  or  as  it  verily  is.  They  set  free  its  limitless  sug- 
gestiveness,  reveal  its  beauty,  expose  its  purpose  and  its  mean- 
ing— helped  herein,  I  need  hardly  say,  by  science.  Except  in 
the  light  of  their  teaching,  we  do  not  know  the  scheme  as  it 
is.  What  we  are  apt  to  miss  are  its  splendour  and  its  final 
significance;  and  what  we  recognize  is  an  impoverished  rem- 
nant, the  commonplace  counterpart  of  our  own  life  and 
interests. 

But  the  relation  of  the  Absolute  to  the  natural  Universe  is 
relatively  simple :   much  simpler  than  its  relation  to  man.    We 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  213 

do  no  violence  to  the  natural  scheme  by  regarding  it  simply 
as  the  expression  of  the  divine  w^ill  and  the  mere  instrument 
of  a  divine  purpose.  But  to  represent  man  as  the  effect  of  any 
kind  of  anterior  cause  or  the  implement  of  any  foreign  aim  is 
to  do  him  vital  wrong.  This  deeper  problem  must  be  the 
theme  of  our  next  lecture. 


LECTURE  XVI 

GOD    AND    man's    FREEDOM 

I  HAVE  said  that  the  relation  between  God  and  the  world  is 
much  more  simple  than  his  relation  to  man.  The  world  re- 
ferred us  back  to  him  as  the  ground  of  its  possibility:  and, 
on  the  other  hand,  in  his  nature  as  self-conscious  there  is  an 
outgoing  necessity  to  which  the  religious  consciousness  testifies 
in  its  own  way,  when  it  declares  that  the  final  reality,  the  ulti- 
mate energy,  is  limitless  and  all-powerful  Love.  But  the  rela- 
tion of  God  to  man  raises  new  questions.  For,  as  we  have 
seen  more  than  once  during  this  course,  that  relation  must  be 
such  as  to  leave  the  privacy,  the  freedom,  the  responsibility  of 
man's  personality  untouched.  And  it  would  appear  at  first 
that  such  non-interference  necessarily  implies  that  man  is  shut 
up  within  himself  and  isolated.  Participation  in  anything  that 
is  common  or  universal  seems  to  be  impossible  to  spiritually 
responsible  beings.  If  we  admit  both  the  testimony  of  morality 
to  the  responsibility  of  the  individual,  and  that  of  religion  to 
his  oneness  with  God,  we  do  so,  we  are  told,  at  the  expense  of 
the  intelligence.  To  believe  both  these  opposite  conceptions  we 
must  turn  reason  out  of  doors. 

I  should  like  to  show,  however,  that  this  very  common 
attitude,  which  forces  us  to  a  choice  between  these  two  alterna- 
tives, is  an  unexamined  and  untrue  prejudice.  The  assertion 
of  man's  unity  with  others  or  of  divine  immanence  in  him 
does  not  necessarily  violate  the  independence  of  man.  The 
differences  between  one  self-conscious  individual  and  another, 
between  man  and  man,  as  well  as  between  man  and  the  Abso- 

214 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  215 

lute,  are  real:  the  activities  of  every  subject  are  its  own:  no 
one  thing  ever  ceases  to  be  itself  so  long  as  it  is  at  all,  nor 
does  it  perform  the  function  of  another.  I  am  not  concerned 
to  deny  or  to  lessen  their  differences.  But  I  do  deny  the 
implied  assumption,  namely,  that  the  assertion  of  difference  and 
distinctions  is  tantamount  to  the  denial  of  unity,  and  that  we 
are  shut  up  to  the  choice  between  abstract  unity  and  abstract 
difference.^  The  efforts  of  the  philosophers  to  prove  that  all 
is  appearance  save  the  universal  substance  in  the  background, 
or,  on  the  other  hand,  to  show  that  particulars  are  the  only 
realia,  have,  fortunately,  proved  unsuccessful.  The  Universe 
refuses  to  be  reduced  either  to  blank  sameness  or  to  a  collection 
(even  if  a  collection!)  of  unrelated  facts  and  incidents.  In 
the  face  of  such  a  refusal  it  may  be  well  to  ask  whether  the 
Universe  may  not  realize  and  reveal  itself  in  the  particulars, 
and  whether  divine  immanence  in  every  element  of  finite  being 
may  not  make  the  latter  all  the  more  real. 

I  find  no  evidence  to  support  the  "either — or"  attitude. 
Physics  will  attribute  the  fact  it  would  explain  neither  to  the 
operation  of  the  world-forces  apart  from  the  particular  object 
nor  to  the  latter  apart  from  the  Universe.  The  flower  needs 
the  help  of  all  the  world  if  it  is  to  bloom ;  but  not  all  the  world 
can  make  it  bloom  if  the  plant  has  no  co-operating  life  of  its 
own.  If  we  observe  the  manifestations  of  the  spirit  of  man — 
his  knowledge,  or  his  art,  or  his  personal  character,  or  his  social 
world, — we  shall  find  on  all  hands  what  look  like  universals 
immanent  in  particulars,  unities  existing  in  and  by  virtue  of 
differences,  and  differences  deriving  their  very  nature  from  the 
unities.  A  piece  of  music  is  not  an  aggregate  of  sounds;  nor 
is  a  picture  a  collection  of  colours;  nor  is  a  geometrical  dem- 
onstration a  succession  of  statements  and  nothing  more.  The 
demonstration  is  the  exhibition  of  the  truth  of  one  hypothesis 
and  of  only  one;  the  work  of  art  is  the  embodiment  of  one 
conception  and  the  expression  of  one  mood.  Hence  one  artist 
cannot  take  up  another's  work,  nor  even  always  complete  his 
own,  if  the  mood  has  passed.     There  are  poems,  like  some  of 

^See  my  article  on  "Divine  Immanence"  in  the  Hibbert  Journal. 


216  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

those  of  Coleridge,  which  will  remain  fragments  to  the  end  of 
time, 

"The   Campanile   is   still   to   finish." 

The  elements  or  parts  of  a  poem  or  proof,  or  of  any  other 
product  of  the  intelligence  of  man,  derive  their  value  and  their 
significance  from  the  unity  which  dwells  in  them,  and  which 
all  alike  serve  to  express.  The  particular  note  makes  its  joyous 
or  pathetic  appeal  because  it  is  part  of,  and  belongs  to,  a  great 
musical  movement.  Take  it  out  of  the  movement  and  you 
deprive  it  of  its  beauty:  it  becomes  a  meaningless  shout.  Put 
a  different  note  in  its  place  and  you  may  ruin  the  movement. 
The  particular  curve  or  arch  or  turret  lends  its  beauty  to,  and 
it  also  borrows  its  beauty  from,  the  edifice  as  a  whole.  Tear 
the  porter  scene  in  Macbeth  out  of  its  context  and  it  sinks  into 
poor  comedy;  leave  it  in  its  context,  where  it  represents  the 
idle,  common  world  in  contact  with  the  terror  and  the  tension 
of  the  scene  of  murder,  and  it  both  retains  and  gives  tragic 
value. 

I  do  not  see  how  it  can  be  denied  that  in  all  these  instances 
the  unity  of  the  whole  is  immanent  in  all  the  parts;  or  that 
the  unity  is  as  real  as  the  particulars  in  which  it  is  expressed ; 
or  that,  when  sundered  from  one  another,  they  are  aught  but 
unreal  abstractions.  Nor  do  I  see  how  the  topic  of  exclusion, 
the  "either — or"  attitude  of  mind,  can  do  justice  to  such 
facts. 

But,  it  will  be  replied,  in  all  these  instances,  culled  from  the 
various  arts,  the  particulars,  or  elements,  make  no  claim  to 
independence  that  is  in  the  least  analogous  to  that  of  self- 
conscious  individuals.  The  mutual  exclusiveness  and  isolation 
are  but  faint  shadows  of  the  exclusiveness  and  isolation  of  per- 
sons. That  is  true.  Nothing  is  so  shut  up  within  itself,  and 
barred  and  bolted  against  invasion  from  without,  as  the  self- 
conscious  individual.  But  it  is  not  the  whole  truth.  If  the 
subjective  difiFerences  are  deeper  and  more  decisive,  the  unity 
of  rational  beings,  that  is,  of  self-conscious  persons,  is  also  fuller 
and  more  significant.    The  elements  that  are  common  to  them 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  217 

all,  and  constitutive  of  them,  mean  more,  and  are  more  numer- 
ous. Moreover,  both  their  differences  and  independence  on 
the  one  hand,  and  their  unity  and  community  on  the  other, 
grow  with  their  own  growth.  Once  more,  I  do  not  deny  or 
minimize  the  privacy,  or  the  independence,  or  the  exclusive- 
ness  of  rational  selves:  but  our  concern  for  the  moment  is 
their  unity — the  universals  that  express  themselves  in  the 
separate  lives. 

I  must  first  insist  on  a  truth  which,  I  trust,  is  fast  becoming 
a  commonplace  of  ethical  doctrine.  It  is  that  man's  ethical 
powers  are  rooted  in  the  social  community  into  which  he  is 
born  and  within  which  he  is  brought  up.  He  is  anteceded,  I 
should  even  say  "anticipated,"  by  it  in  a  spiritual  sense,  just  as 
the  materials  of  his  physical  health  and  growth  are  prior  to 
him.  They  are  there  ready  for  him  to  assimilate  and  appro- 
priate, and  convert  into  living  forces  within  his  spiritual  struc- 
ture. Aristotle  insisted  on  this  truth,  but  not  even  yet  is  it 
definitely  and  clearly  recognized  that  apart  from  the  contribu- 
tion made  to  the  individual  by  the  social  whole  he  is  quite 
meaningless,  impotent  and,  indeed,  unreal. 

Now,  all  these  social  elements,  from  amongst  which  the  in- 
dividual selects  and  appropriates  those  which  he  can  assimilate, 
are  common  elements;  that  is  to  say,  they  are  forces  within 
the  lives  of  the  members  of  the  social  world.  They  weld  the 
individuals  into  a  single  unity  by  endowing  them  all  with  the 
same  qualities.  They  give  to  the  life  of  the  society  its  main 
features  and  direction.  It  is  owing  to  them  that  a  community 
is  controlled  by  the  same  impulse  and,  at  times,  swept  by  the 
same  passion.  Their  common  elements  are,  in  truth,  the  con- 
trolling powers,  although  they  are  both  impotent  and  mean- 
ingless except  as  entering  into  the  characters  of  the  individual 
members.  The  individual  is  their  living  unity.  They  are  in 
and  through  him,  and  he  is  in  and  through  them.  The  inter- 
penetration  of  whole  and  part,  unity  and  differences,  universal 
and  particulars,  is  beyond  dispute  and  of  essential  significance 
to  both. 

So  full  is  this  interpenetration  that  we  can  attribute  nothing 


218  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

whatsoever  original  or  creative  to  the  individual.  He  brings 
with  him  into  his  social,  as  into  his  physical  world,  nothing  but 
a  power  of  appropriating,  that  is,  of  converting  the  social  forces 
which  play  around  him,  or  at  least  some  of  them,  into  personal 
forces,  into  opinions,  convictions,  volitions.  The  language  he 
speaks  is  his  country's;  the  thoughts  which  he  expresses  are  its 
traditions;  the  habits  he  forms  are  its  customs;  he  is  its  product 
almost  as  the  fruit  is  of  a  tree. 

During  the  first  part  of  the  individual's  life,  nay,  during 
the  whole  of  the  life  of  the  plain  man,  that  is,  of  the  man 
who  has  not  made  the  beliefs  he  entertains  and  the  principles 
he  has  adopted  into  objects  of  his  reflective  and  reconstructive 
thought,  these  constitutive  elements  of  mind  and  character 
belong  more  to  the  community  than  they  do  to  the  individual 
himself.  His  appropriation  of  them  being  uncritical,  his  life 
being  ruled  by  hearsay,  it  is  also  incomplete.  He  follows  their 
guidance,  and  is  the  instrument  of  the  social  fabric  rather  than 
his  own  master  and  guide.  Most  of  the  mental  operations  of 
the  plain  man  are  his  own  only  in  the  superficial  sense  in  which 
we  say  that  a  machine  makes  a  particular  article.  He  is,  in 
truth,  the  means  through  which  his  society  operates.  His 
thoughts  are  merely  its  traditions,  accepted,  assimilated,  under- 
stood to  some  extent ;  but  never  tested,  never  brought  before 
the  bar  of  the  individual's  own  judgment  and  justified  there. 
His  religion,  for  instance,  is  apt  to  be  very  much  a  matter  of 
hearsay,  and  its  profounder  truths  to  be  on  that  account  facile 
opinions  and  nothing  more.  Even  his  moral  judgments,  which 
of  all  things  should  be  the  most  independent  and  intensely  per- 
sonal, have  the  same  character.  It  has  never  even  occurred  to 
him  to  criticize  the  moral  code  of  this  society  of  which  he  is 
a  member;  but  he  goes  with  it  the  whole  way  without  a 
moment's  hesitation  when  he  approves  actions  as  right,  con- 
demns them  as  wrong  or  tolerates  them  as  indifiFerent.  The 
methods  that  he  employs  in  his  trade  or  profession — the  way  in 
which  the  carpenter  handles  his  tools,  or  the  farmer  tills  his 
land  and  gathers  in  the  harvest — all  these  things  have  been 
accepted  as  matters  of  course,  and  have  never  been  objects  of 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  219 

free  choice.  In  a  word,  human  life,  in  so  far  as  it  is  subject 
to  traditional  ways,  is  not  free. 

Perhaps  I  ought  to  dwell  for  a  moment  on  this  matter.  We 
usually  speak  of  human  freedom  as  a  thing  to  be  either  affirmed 
or  denied  in  its  entirety  and  fulness.  The  alternatives,  we 
consider,  are  fixed  and  final :  man,  we  say,  is  either  free  or 
not  free.  But  this  is  not  true.  There  are  no  fixed  elements 
in  human  character.  Man  has  to  acquire,  or  "win"  his  free- 
dom, just  as  he  has  to  acquire  knowledge  or  goodness;  and 
there  are  degrees  or  stages  of  freedom  as  there  are  degrees  of 
knowledge  and  virtue.  In  so  far  as  man  is  not  master  of  his 
own  thoughts,  in  the  sense  of  having  convinced  himself  by 
rational  methods  of  their  validity,  he  is  not  free.  He  is  in 
their  service:  they  are  not  in  his.  He  is  the  instrument  by 
means  of  which  the  society  of  which  he  is  a  member  continues 
to  exist;  and  he  carries  onward  its  moral  customs,  its  religious 
beliefs,  and  its  methods  of  industry,  commerce,  and  of  every 
other  form  of  activity.  But  an  instrument  is  not  a  free  agent. 
As  a  rule,  we  do  not  in  the  least  realize  how  limited  our 
freedom  is,  or  the  extent  to  which  we  are  the  instruments  of 
social  purposes  and  exponents  of  social  views  and  nothing  more. 
The  range  of  our  creative  activities  is  very  small.  The  new 
contributions  we  make  to  our  social  inheritance  are  very  lim- 
ited. When  the  end  of  life  comes,  we  discover  that,  after  all, 
we  are  leaving  our  world  very  much  where  we  found  it.  If 
we  have  made  a  contribution,  it  is  confined  to  some  single 
aspect:  we  have  discovered  a  scientific  truth,  or  invented  an 
engine,  or  introduced  some  fresh  element  into  the  commercial 
and  industrial  methods  of  the  day,  or  possibly  given  our  times 
reasons  for  reconsidering  some  of  their  ethical  or  religious 
opinions;  and  we  have  done  this  single  service  by  devoting  our 
lives  to  it.  The  vast  remainder  we  found  in  our  world, 
accepted  uncritically,  and  left  unchanged.  It  is  a  social  pos- 
session rather  than  our  own. 

Mr.  Balfour  in  his  Foundations  of  Belief  quite  justly  accen- 
tuates the  part  played  by  tradition  in  securing  the  unity  and 
the  continued  existence  of  society.     The  less  reflective  a  com- 


220  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

munity  is  the  more  conservative  and  repetitive  it  is.  The  higher 
the  level  of  civilization,  the  greater  the  progress  it  makes  from 
age  to  age.  There  is  nothing  more  static  than  contented  and 
uncritical  ignorance.  In  this  respect  our  social  life  is  quite 
safe — such  is  the  extent  of  our  ignorance  and  our  traditional 
servitude.  Besides,  even  those  who  do  outgrow  the  traditions 
and  customs  of  their  times  do  so  by  the  help  of  their  times. 
They  must  assimilate  its  wisdom  before  they  can  surpass  it. 
Where  Mr.  Balfour  errs  is  in  representing  tradition  and  reason 
as  essentially  in  opposition  and  conflict,  whereas  their  conflict 
is  just  an  accident  of  their  growth.  For  tradition  is  the  product 
of  reason.  There  never  was  a  tradition  which  was  not  at  an 
earlier  stage  a  bold,  original  idea,  whose  propounder  was, 
probably  enough,  persecuted.  And  the  employment  of  reason 
upon  a  tradition  generally  deepens  its  meaning  and  transfigures 
rather  than  supplants  it.  But  one  wonders  what  reason  means 
for  Mr.  Balfour.  He  seems  to  have  identified  its  operations 
with  those  which  are  described  in  the  Formal  Logic,  which 
every  teacher  condemns  and  none  discards. 

All  these  considerations  point  in  the  same  direction.  They 
indicate  the  significance  of  the  common  elements  to  which 
society  owes  its  unity  in  the  lives  of  individual  men,  and  illus- 
trate the  operation  of  universal  forces  in  men's  theoretical  and 
practical  ways.  No  one  can  measure  the  debt  of  a  man  to  the 
society  into  which  he  is  born.  The  range  of  the  elements  of 
the  common  life,  their  comprehensiveness — which  is  such  as  to 
leave  out  only  a  minimum  of  petty  personal  peculiarities — is 
hardly  more  arresting  than  the  intensity  with  which  they  unite. 
Rational  beings  enter  into,  possess,  live  in  and  for  and  by 
means  of  one  another,  to  a  degre  that  is  nowhere  rivalled.  We 
matter  more  to  one  another  than  outward  circumstances,  ex- 
cept perhaps  when  a  man  is  reduced  into  an  animal  by  the 
urgency  of  his  physical  needs,  and  can,  for  instance,  think  of 
nothing  except  of  his  hunger,  or  thirst,  or  physical  pain.  We 
share  in  more  things,  and  these  are,  as  a  rule,  the  most  vital. 
Moreover,  we  share  in  spiritual  matters  without  breaking  them 
up  or  partitioning  them.     I  may  own  a  field  similar  in  size 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  221 

and  shape  and  soil  to  my  neighbour;  but  his  field  is  not  mine 
nor  is  mine  his.  But  both  of  us  may  acquire  knowledge  of 
the  same  truths,  obey  the  same  principles  of  conduct,  enter- 
tain the  same  religious  beliefs.  Truth  always  is  universal  in 
character,  and  so  indeed  is  goodness.  In  physical  matters  the 
unity  is  never  quite  complete :  an  element  of  exclusiveness  sur- 
vives, and  though  goodwill  and  generosity  may  overcome  it, 
they  cannot  delete  it.  Property  in  material  things  necessarily 
has  this  exclusive  characteristic.  What  is  mine  is  not  yours, 
and  what  is  yours  is  not  mine.  But  in  spiritual  matters  the 
privacy  of  ownership  goes  along  with  the  opposite  quality,  so 
that  to  say  "I  in  you,  and  ye  in  me"  is  not  merely  the  exag- 
gerated utterance  of  religious  emotion,  but  the  daily  experience 
of  mankind.  It  is  a  truth  illustrated  constantly  on  every  happy 
hearth  and  in  every  other  harmonious  human  society. 

But  our  critic  may  reply  that  while  the  unity  and  mutual 
interpenetration  of  men  in  society  is  plain  and  indisputable, 
man's  oneness  with  his  God  is  another  matter.  I  agree,  but 
it  differs  through  being  deeper  and  more  comprehensive.  A 
man's  religion  is  a  man's  life — the  chief,  the  dominant,  and  all- 
pervasive  element  of  it.  It  is  that  to  which  he  is  unreservedly 
devoted.  In  this  case  his  very  self  is  involved — given  utterly 
away  to  the  object  of  its  devotion. 

But  it  is  recovered  at  the  same  instant.  In  fact,  the  giving 
of  the  self  and  the  receiving  of  it  back  endowed  with  the  price- 
less consciousness  of  being  at  peace  with  God,  forgiven,  united 
with  him  in  love,  constitute  one  single  movement.  The  self 
returns  to  itself  as  if  completing  a  circle.  It  is  a  grave  error 
to  break  up  the  act,  as  if  self-sacrifice  came  first,  and  the 
recovery  of  the  self,  the  reward  of  the  act  of  devotion,  lagged 
behind  and  followed  afterwards.  The  dedication  is  not  possi- 
ble without  the  simultaneous  consciousness  of  a  purified, 
strengthened,  "saved"  self:  nor  these  without  the  dedication. 
To  give  ourselves  to  God  is  to  have  God  with  us  and  in  us. 

Here,  then,  we  have  precisely  that  for  which  we  have  been 
seeking,  namely,  the  coincidence,  nay,  the  inseparableness  of 
the  independence  and  individuality  of  man  and  his  unity  with 


222  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

his  God.  This  truth  will  be  denied  by  no  one  who  has  felt 
the  personal  uplift  which  comes  from  adopting  some  great 
cause  as  a  life  object.  In  fact,  man  does  not  gain  possession 
of  himself  in  any  complete  sense  until  he  gives  himself.  His 
infinitude  escapes  him  until  he  discovers  a  worthy  end  of  life. 
And  this  is  as  much  as  to  say  that  he  cannot  do  without  a  God. 
Till  he  finds  him,  his  life  is  a  thing  of  shreds  and  patches. 
Once  he  does  find  him,  he  will  find  him  everywhere.  Even 
an  unworthy  God  has  this  omnipresence.  The  worshipper  of 
Mammon  is  never  really  out  of  the  service  of  his  deity.  Every- 
thing is  valued  by  him  from  the  point  of  view  of  material 
wealth.  Consideration  of  material  wealth  will  direct  the  course 
of  his  life,  fill  his  thoughts,  make  and  rule  his  home,  and 
thoroughly  cramp  his  soul.  But  worthier  Gods  have  the  same 
character.  They  are  present  and  operative  throughout  every 
detail  of  the  religious  man's  life.  The  good  man,  in  the  midst 
of  his  deepest  sorrows  and  most  painful  sufferings — if  he  does 
not  lose  courage  and  let  go  his  hold — recognizes  the  will  of 
his  God,  and  wills  that  "His  will  be  done."  "If  I  ascend 
up  into  heaven,  thou  art  there:  if  I  make  my  bed  in  hell, 
behold,  thou  art  there.  If  I  take  the  wings  of  the  morning, 
and  dwell  in  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  sea;  even  there  shall 
thy  hand  lead  me,  and  thy  right  hand  shall  hold  me."  ^  The 
categories  of  exclusion  break  down  utterly.  So  far  from  being 
weakened,  the  individuality  of  man  is  immeasurably  strength- 
ened by  his  consciousness  of  his  oneness  with  his  God.  His 
victory  is  assured ;  for  God  being  with  him,  the  whole  scheme 
of  things  is  with  him.  Both  freedom  and  the  consciousness  of 
freedom  grow  as  the  individual  comprehends  more  fully  and 
makes  a  wiser  use  of  the  scheme  of  things  and  unites  himself 
with  its  tendencies. 

In  their  anxiety  to  maintain  man's  freedom  certain  philoso- 
phers have  been  led  to  conclude  to  a  community  of  finite  spirits 
co-eternal  with  the  infinite.  To  assign  an  origin  to  a  self- 
conscious  being  in  the  sense  of  finding  the  conditions  of  his 
existence  in  something  or  somebody  anterior  to  himself  is,  they 

'Psalm  cxxxix,  8,  9,  10. 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  223 

maintain,  to  deprive  him  of  his  freedom.  He  becomes  the 
agent  and  instrument  of  these  prior  conditions ;  and  his  actions 
are  in  strictness  not  his  own.  In  fact,  they  maintain  that  he 
has  no  self  and  is  not  a  self.  He  is  just  a  product  and  link 
in  the  chain  of  endless  natural  causation.  The  individual  in 
order  to  be  free  must  be  new ;  and  either  arise  from  nothing,  or 
be  brought  into  being  by  itself.  But  both  of  these  alternatives 
are  unreasonable.  There  remains  a  third,  however,  namely, 
that  he  shall  have  co-existed  eternally  with  God  as  a  member 
of  a  society  of  spirits  which  never  had  a  beginning,  or  of  an 
Eternal  Republic  of  which  God  is  President  or,  at  least,  the 
first  among  equals.  And  being  spirits,  they  must  express  them- 
selves in  objects  even  as  we  conceive  God  to  do,  and  make 
manifest  their  presence  in  the  Universe  and  their  operative 
part  in  the  scheme  of  things.  Such  are  the  conclusions  of  the 
Pluralist.  He  is  driven  to  this  conclusion  no  less  by  ethical 
than  by  theological  and  philosophical  considerations.  He  can- 
not entertain  the  conception  of  a  solitary,  monadic  God,  a 
God  aloof  from  or  without  a  world,  a  subject  without  any 
object.  God  expresses  and  eternally  realizes  himself  in  the 
world  process;  that  process  is  his  working,  the  revelation  of 
his  nature,  his  nature  being  so  to  work.  On  the  other  hand, 
neither  can  the  Pluralist  entertain  the  idea  of  selves  which  are 
the  outcome  of  previous  conditions  and  nevertheless  free.  And 
the  conception  of  an  Eternal  Republic  of  spirits  seems  to  meet 
both  requirements.  It  makes  God  a  member  of  a  community 
of  spirits  instead  of  being  solitary,  and  it  secures  man's  free- 
dom— the  condition  of  a  moral  life. 

Now,  this  view  contains  truths  that  it  is  well  to  accentuate. 
I  sympathize  fully  with  the  refusal  of  the  Pluralists  to  com- 
promise man's  freedom,  or  in  any  way  to  betray  the  apparent 
creativeness  that  is  involved  in  moral  responsibility.  But  their 
refusal  is  made  on  grounds  which  are  not  tenable.  They  give 
a  wrong  account  of  those  powers  of  origination  which  we  must 
attribute  to  a  will  which  is  free.  These  spring  from  the  nature 
of  mind,  not  from  the  absence  of  antecedent  conditions.  Mind 
may  be  as  much  a  natural  product  as  the  acorns  of  the  oak 


224  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

tree.  All  the  evidence  we  can  get  of  any  individual  mind 
points  in  that  direction.  There  is  no  doubt  that  the  child, 
at  his  birth,  brings  vi'ith  him,  as  a  part  of  his  disposition,  all 
manner  of  conditions  that  were  anterior  to  his  arrival.  He  is  a 
mixture  even  at  his  birth,  and  the  meeting-place  of  many  forces 
— not  a  bare  "mind"  or  self.  Selfhood  has  to  be  acquired. 
The  evidence  already  ample  to  common  experience  is  supported 
by  modern  science,  which  is  every  day  exposing  more  fully  the 
continuity  of  man  with  his  antecedents,  and  his  affinity  and 
ultimate  oneness  with  the  world  into  which  he  has  come.  We 
may  still  be  unable  to  give  a  convincing  account  of  the  nature 
of  the  relation  between  mind  and  body,  or  nature  and  spirit, 
and  may  be  driven  one  day  towards,  and  the  next  away  from, 
Pampsychism;  but  the  existence  of  the  relation,  that  is,  of 
some  kind  of  continuity,  is  not  a  matter  of  doubt  even  to  the 
parallelists,  who  would  fain  neither  affirm  nor  deny  the  unity. 
In  a  word,  man  must  be  regarded  as  a  natural  product.  What 
we  have  still  to  do  is  to  determine  more  clearly  the  character 
of  a  natural  world  which  could  have  man  as  its  product. 
Man's  freedom  cannot  be  maintained  if,  in  order  to  be  free, 
he  must  have  no  antecedents.  He  is  new  only  in  the  same 
sense  as  the  bud  or  the  flower  is  new,  which  is  on  the  tree 
to-day  and  was  not  there  yesterday.  In  that  sense  the  whole 
scheme  of  things  is  new  at  every  succeeding  instant.  Man's 
freedom  must  be  accounted  for  in  some  other  way  than  that  of 
denying  his  origin  and  making  him  eternal. 

In  the  first  place,  I  would  again  urge,  what  is  constantly 
overlooked,  that  man  is  not  born  free.  He  is  born  capable  of 
becoming  more  and  more  free  by  his  intercourse  with  his  fellows 
and  his  experience  of  the  world.  He  exhibits  this  capacity  of 
becoming  free  when  he  first  gives  his  own  interpretation  of  a 
fact,  and  assigns  to  it  his  own  value.  He  is  free  in  the  degree 
in  which  he  has  realized  a  self  that  is  rational,  and  in  regard 
to  those  matters  on  which  his  judgments  have  universal  validity 
and  are  true  to  the  nature  of  things.  No  doubt  this  world, 
both  within  and  without  him,  partakes  in  his  acts  of  judgment, 
as  in  all  else  that  he  is  and  does,  whether  as  a  physical  or  as 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  226 

a  spiritual  being.  Apart  from  his  world,  as  I  have  frequently 
urged,  he  is  nothing  and  can  do  nothing.  We  may  even  say 
that  his  world  breaks  into  self-consciousness,  and  thinks  and 
wills  in,  and  through,  him.  But  that  constitutes  rather  than 
destroys  the  conditions  of  his  freedom.  That  is  to  say,  he  is 
free  by  the  help  of  his  world,  and  in  virtue  of  the  rational 
activities  which  he  performs;  even  though  nature  also  performs 
them  in  and  through  him.  For  the  world  becomes  an  object 
of  his  experience  and  the  content  of  his  self,  as  he  interprets 
its  meaning  and  determines  its  value  and  use.  And  it  is  this 
rational  recoil  upon  the  world  which  makes  it  his  object,  and 
constitutes  the  individual  freedom.  What  was  outer  becomes 
inner.  The  authority  that  was  alien  and  external  becomes  a 
personal  conviction,  and  the  rule  of  behaviour  is  self-imposed. 
Nor  are  the  rules  less  original  in  that  they  are  r^-imposed,  or 
that  he  makes  them  out  of  provided  material,  by  the  help  of  an 
experience  that  was  uncritical  and  only  half-conscious.  They 
are  derived  from  the  objective  world,  for  man  must  borrow 
every  item  of  his  experience  as  well  as  make  it;  but  he  does 
borrow,  and  in  borrowing  he  re-constitutes.  For  the  purpose 
is  the  individual's,  and  so  also  is  the  estimate  of  relative  values, 
and  therefore  the  approval  or  disapproval  of  actions  as  right  or 
wrong.  The  standard  of  value,  the  purpose,  and  therefore  the 
motive  are  introduced  by  man.  They  depend  upon  his  inter- 
pretation of  the  needs  and  nature  of  the  self,  and  of  the  means 
of  realizing  it.  And  it  is  the  motive,  the  good  which  the  indi- 
vidual seeks  as  his  end,  which  ripens  unto  the  act  and  makes 
it  an  expression  of  spiritual  freedom.  The  Pluralists  have 
missed  the  meaning  of  self-consciousness,  and  they  have  sought 
freedom  in  isolation  from  circumstances,  instead  of  by  the  use 
of  them. 

In  the  next  place,  the  refusal  of  the  Idealistic  Pluralist  to 
isolate  God,  thereby  making  the  existence  of  the  Universe 
contingent  on  a  capricious  will,  is  justified.  The  Pluralist  finds 
in  God's  nature  his  need  of  an  object.  Nevertheless,  it  does 
not  follow  that  we  are  entitled  to  conclude  to  a  multiplicity  of 
eternal  spirits,  whether  finite  or  infinite,  nor  to  constitute  an 


226  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

Eternal  Republic  with  God  as  President.  Neither  ordinary 
experience  nor  science  supports  such  a  view.  For  science  there 
is  one  Universe.  It  forms  a  single  system  in  which  all  things 
have  their  place  and  function ;  and  it  implies  one  ultimate 
reality,  whose  process  of  self-manifestation  the  Universe  is. 
Of  course  the  question  is  altered  if  there  are  contingent  hap- 
penings, or  events  which  have  had  no  antecedents.  But,  on  the 
other  hand,  if  it  be  true,  as  James  held  at  one  time,  that 
"the  negative,  the  alogical  is  never  wholly  banished,"  or  that 
there  are  real  indeterminations,  real  beginnings,  real  ends,  real 
crises,  catastrophes  and  escapes,  then  there  is  an  end  to  all 
reasoning.  We  cannot  say  that  2X2=4  if,  now  and  then, 
or  in  some  places,  2X10=4.  That  neither  philosophy  nor 
science  has  traced  any  absolute  unity  in  the  details  of  events 
and  facts  is  true:  the  conception  of  unity  remains  a  hypothesis. 
But  it  is  a  hypothesis,  without  faith  in  which  the  attempt  to 
know,  which  is  to  discover  the  relation  of  facts  to  facts  within 
a  system,  would  not  take  place.  James's  own  remedy  for  the 
situation  is  a  condemnation  of  it.  Belief  is  to  be  made  a 
matter  of  "will,"  a  violation  of  the  value  of  the  rational  use 
of  evidence  which  would  be  admitted  in  practice  by  no  one. 
The  fact  is,  however,  that  with  every  advance  in  every  form 
and  department  of  knowledge,  and  indeed  of  civilization,  the 
hypothesis  of  a  single  power,  which  expresses  itself  in  the  har- 
monies of  a  Universe  whose  marvels  ever  grow  with  our  in- 
sight, is  being  steadily  substantiated  as  valid.  And,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  conjecture  of  a  multiplicity  of  minor  deities,  or 
of  a  finite  and  limited  God  who  is  first  amongst  other  finite 
spirits,  is  revealed  more  and  more  as  the  creation  of  the  im- 
agination. There  are  no  premisses — unless  we  admit  a  plural- 
istic, that  is,  a  chaotic  universe — from  which  any  such  con- 
clusion can  be  drawn.  All  the  premisses  we  can  have  are 
derived  from  our  experience  of  the  world  as  it  now  is;  and 
our  experience,  whether  cognitive,  or  practical  and  ethical,  rests 
on  the  assumption  of  a  Universe  which  is  a  single  rational 
cosmos.     All  the  probabilities  point  to  a  Deity  who  is  imraa- 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  227 

nent  and  operative,  and  ever  expressing  himself  in  the  ever- 
changing  continuity  of  the  world-process. 

Nor  can  there  be  any  doubt  that  the  fullest  revelation  of 
the  nature  of  the  Deity  is  man  at  his  best,  the  perfect  man.  We 
can  conceive  nothing  higher  or  better  than  a  life  devoted  to 
right  doing.  Nothing  except  what  is  morally  right  finally 
justifies  itself  or  has  absolute  worth.  Hence,  in  making  God 
partake  in  the  movement,  and  in  regarding  him  as  the  ultimate 
source  of  the  impulse  towards  the  best ;  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
in  regarding  man,  at  his  duty,  as  re-enacting  the  will  of  God 
and  realizing  it  anew  in  every  good  action,  we  are  affirming 
that  unity  of  the  divine  and  human  which  at  the  same  time 
preserves  the  independence  and  freedom  of  finite  spirits.  The 
alternative  to  this  view  is  obviously  untenable.  A  God  severed 
from  the  course  of  the  Universe  becomes  an  empty  name,  as 
the  history  of  theology  amply  proves;  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
it  is  not  possible  to  account  for  the  Universe  except  by  refer- 
ence to  antecedents  which  are  adequate.  And  no  antecedent 
is  adequate  except  a  God  who  is  spirit,  and  perfect  in  power 
and  goodness.  Again,  to  sever  man  from  the  Universe  is  to 
reduce  him  into  helpless  nothingness,  and  at  the  same  time 
it  is  to  make  the  moral  world  a  human  invention. 

The  sceptic  would  find  a  remedy  for  some  of  his  doubts  in 
the  attempt  to  give  his  own  positive  theory  of  his  world.  But 
now  that  naturalism  and  materialism  are  silent,  no  such  theory 
is  offered  to  us,  and  we  are  flung  back  upon  our  anthropological 
views  as  our  ultimate  theoretical  and  working  conceptions.  But 
if  the  problem  of  the  relation  of  God  to  man  is  more  difficult 
than  that  of  his  relation  to  the  natural  world,  the  discussion 
of  it  is  also  more  illuminating. 


LECTURE  XVII 

CONTINGENCIES 

The  faithful  analysis  of  the  nature  of  self-consciousness  over- 
comes the  main  difficulty  of  the  relation  between  God  and  man. 
We  saw,  in  the  last  lecture,  that  the  unity  of  men,  as  rational 
beings,  is  deeper  and  more  intimate  than  any  other.  They  can 
be  moved  by  the  same  forces,  know  the  same  truths,  and  pursue 
the  same  ends.  Things  spiritual  are  by  nature  common  to  all. 
Yet,  on  the  other  hand,  each  man  as  rational  is  moved  only 
by  inner  forces;  the  truths  are  elements  in  his  own  knowledge, 
and  his  ends  are  his  own  and  as  private  as  if  he  alone  willed 
them.  The  unity  and  independence  of  men  not  only  exist 
together,  but  grow  by  means  of  each  other.  The  more  rational 
liberty  men  enjoy,  the  stronger  the  unity  that  binds  them; 
the  more  they  individually  acquire  universal  views  and  adopt 
universal  ends,  the  more  they  live  for  society  and  society  lives 
in  them,  the  stronger  and  the  more  significant  is  their  individ- 
uality.   A  great  man  is  the  voice  of  his  people  and  his  time. 

Though  the  same  truths  hold  of  the  relation  of  man  to  his 
God,  difficulties  emerge  when  the  relation  is  considered  from 
the  point  of  view  of  the  latter.  The  way  from  the  finite  to 
the  infinite  has  been  always  more  easy  for  the  feet  of  the  pil- 
grims than  the  way  from  the  infinite  to  the  finite.  We  readily 
adopt  the  view  that  represents  the  world-process  as  a  mani- 
festation of  the  nature  of  the  will  of  the  Absolute;  we  are 
slow  to  identify  the  Absolute  with  that  process,  or  to  acknowl- 
edge that  the  Absolute  partakes  in  any  way  in  the  vagaries 
of  the  volitions  of  mankind.  Surely,  we  are  told,  the  divine 
being  is  no  shareholder  in  man's  sinfulness! 

228 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  229 

Two  ways  are  advocated  by  which  the  difficulty  may  be 
avoided:  one  is  to  represent  man  and  all  finite  existence  as, 
in  the  last  resort,  phenomenal  and  temporary  appearance  and 
nothing  more ;  the  other  is  to  refrain  from  the  complete  identi- 
fication of  the  world's  course  with  the  Absolute. 

Idealists  are  agreed  in  regarding  man  as  a  "finite-infinite" 
being.  But  they  differ  as  to  the  significance  in  man's  case  of 
these  two  aspects.  On  one  view  man's  final  and  distinctive 
characteristic  is  his  finitude.  He  is  a  finite  being;  but  he  is 
troubled  with  aims  that  are  infinite.  He  is  doomed  to  a  spir- 
itual unrest  of  which  other  finite  beings,  such  as  the  animals, 
know  nothing.  He  aims  at  spiritual  perfection.  To  attain  it 
is  his  only  mission;  and  he  exhibits  his  true  nature,  or  reveals 
his  true  self,  only  in  the  pursuit  of  it.  But  he  never  does 
attain.  Not  one  act  of  man  has  yet  hit  the  mark.  If  he 
did  attain,  he  would  collapse  qua  individual.  He  would  be- 
come one  with  the  Absolute  in  such  a  way  as  to  be  transcended 
and  to  disappear.  He  thus  remains  an  unsolved  contradiction, 
and,  as  such,  bound  to  pass  away.  He  is  only  an  element  in  the 
Absolute,  and  has  only  an  adjectival  existence  on  this  view; 
and  his  deeds,  right  and  wrong,  have  the  same  dubious  reality. 
He  has  his  own  place,  but  only  as  part  of  a  passing  show. 

On  the  other  view,  and  in  direct  opposition  to  the  former, 
the  last  and  distinctive  feature  of  man  is  his  infinitude. 
Ideally,  there  is  nothing  anywhere  which  is  to  him  simply  an 
alien  or  exclusive  other.  All  that  is  or  can  be  may  be  his 
object;  for  he  is  an  intelligent  or  rational  being,  and  his  coun- 
terpart is  the  Universe  as  a  whole.  But,  like  all  other  beings 
who  are  subject  to  the  law  of  evolution,  man  is  only  the  process 
of  becoming  that  which  he  verily  is.  His  deepest  reality  lies  in 
his  possibilities.  They  are  possibilities  of  greater  spiritual  ex- 
cellence, and  so  of  fuller  justice  to  the  self,  and  therefore  come 
to  him  in  the  form  of  obligations.  He  is  under  an  obligation 
be  it  noted,  not  to  be,  but  to  become.  That  is  to  say,  it  is  the 
process  that  is  imperative:  the  movement  from  less  to  more. 
He  has  to  make  good  his  infinite  nature;  to  become  more  and 
more  Godlike;  to  unify  himself  with  God;  and  in  these  very 


230  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

acts  of  unification  to  stand  out  more  and  more  as  an  inde- 
pendent individual. 

In  these  lectures  the  view  adopted  has  been  the  second.  The 
union  of  man  with  God,  or,  in  other  words,  the  immanence 
of  God  not  only  in  the  natural  world,  as  its  final  truth  and 
reality,  but  also  in  mankind,  has  been  held  uncompromisingly. 
I  have  repeatedly  affirmed  that  "a  thing  is  what  it  does" — 
quoting  Mr.  Nettleship's  great  saying;  and  I  have  rejected  the 
notion  that  a  thing  is  a  being  which  lurks  somewhere  in  the 
background  behind  its  deeds,  and  is  therefore  unknown  and  un- 
knowable. Hence  it  follows  that  if  we  cannot  account  for  the 
Universe — including  man — save  by  referring  it  to  the  sustained 
action  of  the  Absolute  and  by  representing  it  as  the  process  by 
which  the  Absolute  reveals  itself,  no  option  remains  except  to 
identify  the  Absolute  with  the  world-process.  It  is  in  its  light 
that  the  Universe  is  comprehensible;  and  it  is  in  the  light  of 
the  Universe  that  the  Absolute  is  comprehensible. 

But  this  is  a  step  which  philosophers  no  less  than  theologians 
hesitate  to  take;  and  that  for  reasons  which  certainly  deserve 
attention.  It  is  insisted  that  process  within  a  whole — the  pro- 
cess of  growth,  for  instance — is  possible  when  process  of  the 
whole  would  be  unthinkable.  The  part  or  element  of  a  whole 
may  evidently  appropriate  its  environment  and  grow  by  means 
of  it;  but  for  the  whole  or  Absolute  there  can  be  no  environ- 
ment— nothing  by  reference  to  which  it  could  change.  The 
difficulty  is  real,  but  it  is  not  insuperable.  Self-conscious  be- 
ings are  capable  of  changes  purely  from  within.  Man,  as  a 
spiritual  or  rational  being,  has  within  himself,  and  apart  from 
all  intercourse  with  his  outer  world,  an  experience  on  which 
he  may  reflect  and  resources  on  which  he  may  draw.  Spiritual 
experience  sometimes  discovers  its  ow^n  meaning  and  enriches  it 
greatly  by  doing  so.  There  is  a  transition  from  an  experience 
that  is  traditional,  imitative,  uncritical,  partly  conscious  and 
partly  instinctive  into  an  experience  that  is  reflective.  By  this 
transition  experience  achieves  fuller  meaning,  but  it  takes  place 
without  reference  to  any  environment.  Whether  in  this  mat- 
ter we  can  draw  any  inference  regarding  an  absolute  experience, 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  231 

it  is  difficult  to  say.  In  one  aspect  the  transition  is  plainly  im- 
possible; for  we  cannot  attribute  to  an  absolute  experience  the 
traditional  character  and  that  ignorance  of  itself  which  are 
characteristic  of  the  ordinary  human  consciousness.  The  Abso- 
lute knows  the  end — were  there  an  end ! — from  the  beginning ; 
and  fuller  knowledge  thereof  cannot  be  acquired.  Neverthe- 
less, one  may  ask,  what  is  involved  in  the  transition  from  the 
cognitive  or  intellectual  foresight  and  anticipation  of  events, 
on  the  one  side,  to  the  experience  of  them,  on  the  other,  as  actu- 
ally taking  place  ?  The  distinction  is  quite  real ;  and  there  may 
be  in  the  actual  participation  of  the  Absolute  in  finite  processes, 
or  of  the  God  of  Love  in  the  doings  and  destiny  of  his  children, 
more  than  there  can  be  in  the  mere  foresight  of  them.  That 
participation  cannot  lack  meaning  and  value,  as  we  readily  see 
if  we  conceive  the  opposite,  namely,  a  God  who  sits  aloof  from 
the  world-course  and  looks  on. 

A  second  difficulty  is  found  in  the  fact  that  any  process  im- 
plies temporal  succession;  but  an  Absolute  which  is  subject  to 
temporal  conditions,  or  which  changes,  is  held  to  be  a  confused 
and  self-contradictory  conception.  Such  an  Absolute  would 
differ  to-day  from  what  it  was  yesterday  and  from  what  it  will 
be  to-morrow;  and  that,  we  are  told,  is  impossible  for  the 
Whole,  the  perfect. 

This  difficulty,  I  believe,  springs  from  taking  a  half  truth  as 
the  whole  truth.  For  that  which  changes  also  persists.  Suc- 
cession implies  permanence,  and  it  can  take  place  only  in  that 
which  has  duration.  It  is  a  succession  of  instants  or  nows 
which  issue  from  the  sam.e  permanent  reality.  Time  as  mere 
succession  is  an  aspect  of  a  fact  and  nothing  more,  and  can 
exist  only  in  relation  to  its  opposite,  namely,  eternity.  But 
eternity,  also,  as  ordinarily  understood,  is  an  unreal  abstraction. 
For  it  is  taken  to  be  extended  and  fixed — stretched  out  end- 
lessly, like  space,  before  and  also  after  the  flux  of  time.  But 
eternity  is  that  which  expresses  itself  in  an  endless  succession 
of  instants.  It  is  the  possibility  of  endless  nows.  And  every 
now  for  the  rational  being,  at  least,  carries  within  it  something 
both  of  the  past  and  of  the  future,  and  therefore  "transcends" 


232  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

time.  Eternity  is  not  a  spatial  expanse,  nor  when  we  speak  of 
God  as  living  in  eternity,  or  of  our  fellow  mortals  as  entering 
therein,  should  we  think  of  eternity  as  a  fixed  separate  region. 
Eternity  does  not  exist  except  as  breaking  out  into  an  endless 
succession  of  Nows;  and  there  is  nothing  except  what  is  now. 
What  was  is  not  now :  nor  is  what  will  be.  Thus  each  succes- 
sive Now  is  all  comprehensive.  The  meaning  and  value  of  the 
past  are  gathered  into  it,  and  the  possibilities  of  the  future  exist 
in  it. 

In  a  word,  the  Whole  it  is  big  with  is  in  process.  Reality 
reveals  itself  in  a  successive  series  of  finite  facts.  By  this  I  do 
not  mean  to  imply  that  the  succession  constitutes  the  facts;  or 
that,  in  the  last  resort,  things  consist  of  time,  so  that  "time  is 
the  essence  of  the  life  of  a  living  being  and  the  whole  meaning 
of  its  reality."  It  is  one  thing  to  say  that  everything  that  is 
moves  or  changes,  and  another  that  it  consists  of  motion  and 
change.  Motion,  change,  taken  by  themselves  are  abstractions. 
They  are  not  reality,  but  ways  in  which  reality  exists  and 
behaves. 

To  say,  for  instance,  as  modern  physics  does,  that  a  stone  is 
not  a  fixed  and  static  thing  but  a  temporary  meeting-place  of 
different  activities  is  not  to  reduce  it  into  a  succession  of  move- 
ments of  time,  although  all  its  activities  take  place  in  time. 
The  weight  of  the  stone  is  its  active  relation  to  the  earth,  an 
instance  of  attraction ;  its  colour  means  that  it  reflects  some  rays 
and  absorbs  others ;  its  hardness  or  softness  indicate  the  amount 
of  energy  with  which  its  particles  attract  each  other.  There  is 
activity  and  therefore  change  at  every  turn,  and  change  implies 
time  though  it  is  not  itself  time.  Nothing  is  reducible  into 
time.  Time  is  itself,  as  I  have  insisted,  an  abstraction.  We  do 
not  explain  things  by  running  them  back  into  single,  simple 
elements;  we  drop  their  qualities.  To  make  time  the  essence 
of  reality  we  must  drop  all  qualities.  Even  change  would  not 
survive.  Similarly,  although  process  is  real,  process  is  not  reality 
any  more  than  a  static  condition  is.  But  the  consistent  adop- 
tion of  the  idea  of  process,  instead  of  the  static  and  spatial  con- 
ceptions now  assumed,  is  possibly  the  deepest  speculative  need 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  233 

of  our  time.  With  it  should  be  placed  the  conviction  that 
explanation  is  to  be  found  in  the  most  concrete,  and  not  in 
the  most  simple  and  abstract,  conceptions.  It  is  the  whole  that 
matters  for  knowledge ;  the  function  which  each  thing  performs 
within  the  whole,  the  character  it  gains  by  its  relation  to  it, 
these  constitute  its  reality.  And  the  whole  itself  must  be  re- 
garded as  functioning,  declaring,  and  realizing  itself  in  its 
elements.  "To  me,"  says  Mr.  Bradley,  "as  to  every  one  else, 
the  world  is  throughout  full  of  change.  Change  is  no  illusion, 
although  apart  from  that  which  persists  in,  through  and  by  the 
change,  it  is  nothing." 

Philosophy  must,  I  believe,  change  its  accent.  That  helpless- 
ness which  a  fixed  and  static  perfection  implies,  that  eternally 
immobile  substance  with  which  theology  in  the  past  has  iden- 
tified its  perfect  God  must  give  way  to  the  most  concrete  and 
active  Whole  which  we  can  conceive.  And  that  Whole  is  the 
conception  of  self-conscious  individuality — the  absolute  self- 
consciousness.  It  is  necessarily  all-comprehensive,  for  it  has  no 
complete  other;  and  it  is  essentially  an  outgoing  activity.  The 
conception  of  Absolute  spirit  or  subject,  gives  to  religion  a  God 
who  is  living,  and  to  philosophy  an  Absolute  that  sustains  the 
Universe  and  expresses  its  perfection  in  its  changes.  Spirit 
implies  an  objective  content;  and  Absolute  spirit  implies  the 
Universe.  Hence  to  explain  that  Universe  we  need  this  most 
concrete  of  all  our  hypotheses,  instead  of  such  abstract  notions 
as  those  of  substance  and  time.  It  is  by  reference  to  a  more 
and  more  comprehensive  whole  that  we  explain,  and  there  alone 
should  we  seek  the  ultimately  real — in  a  direction  directly 
opposite  to  that  of  the  Bergsonian  philosophers,  as  I  understand 
them. 

It  follows  that  the  main  problem  of  philosophy  and  the  cen- 
tral concern  for  theology  is  the  possibility  of  identifying  the 
world-process  as  we  know  it  with  our  conception  of  the  Abso- 
lute or  of  God.  And,  I  have  indicated,  both  theologians  and 
philosophers  hesitate  to  do  this,  except  under  qualifying  condi- 
tions and  with  reservations.  There  are,  for  them,  in  the  world- 
process  facts  and  events  that  are  outwith  the  will  of  the  Abso- 


234.  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

lute.  God  has  allowed  them  to  be — possibly  because  he  could 
not  help  it,  being  himself  finite;  possibly  as  the  best  means  of 
securing  the  conditions  necessary  for  the  moral  adventure. 

The  view  that  there  are  occurrences  which  God  cannot 
prevent,  or  which  happened  without  his  willing  them,  implies, 
of  course,  that  there  exists  another  additional  cause  and  that 
he  is  limited.  On  some  theories,  not  only  is  his  power  limited, 
but  his  goodness.  He  is  a  finite  being  in  the  same  sense  as  men 
are  finite,  though  he  has  much  more  power  than  man,  and  is 
man's  leader  in  the  moral  battle  as  well  as  his  comrade  in  arms ; 
and  he  has  to  become  good.  And  the  issue  of  that  battle,  so 
far  from  being  a  foregone  conclusion,  is  quite  uncertain.  It 
depends  upon  our  doing  our  best  and  playing  our  part,  no  less 
than  upon  him.  And  the  uncertainty  of  victory  is  supposed  to 
be  capable  of  inspiring  the  fight  with  an  earnestness  which 
otherwise  it  could  not  have.  Moreover,  the  view  that  God 
shares  our  infirmities  is  held  to  bring  him  nearer  to  us  than  the 
conception  of  a  God  eternally  perfect;  and  it  is  maintained 
that  it  is  impossible  to  maintain  both  the  perfection  of  God  and 
his  genuine  participation  in  the  fate  of  mankind. 

I  intended  to  dismiss  the  view  of  a  limited  God  as  not  worthy 
of  serious  criticism;  but  it  may  be  well  to  point  to  one  or  two 
reasons  for  holding  that  it  is  unsatisfactory. 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  not  at  all  certain  that  the  uncertainty 
of  victory  will  add  earnestness  to  the  moral  struggle,  whatever 
it  may  do  in  others.  If  it  does,  it  is  at  the  cost  of  the  purity  of 
the  moral  motive,  which  never  does  consider  or  calculate  conse- 
quences. Duty  calls  a  man  to  his  post,  and  he  comes — without 
making  any  prudent  calculations  of  probabilities  beforehand. 
The  religious  man,  moreover,  has  already  committed  himself  to 
the  good  causes  and  made  himself  over  to  his  God,  holding 
nothing  back;  and  the  conception  of  the  perfection  of  him  in 
whom  he  has  trusted,  with  the  conviction  of  certain  victory,  are 
an  inspiration  to  him.  Never  has  its  assurance  slackened  the 
zeal  of  the  ethical  or  religious  spirit. 

In  the  next  place,  both  religion  and  philosophy  presuppose 
and  demand  a  finality  which  is  inconsistent  with  the  limitations 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  235 

of  finitude.  The  conception  of  the  Absolute,  or  the  hypothesis 
of  systematic  and  all-comprehensive  unity,  or  of  a  single  focus 
in  which  all  things  meet,  and  which  is  the  source  from  which 
all  the  forms  of  energy  flow,  is  essential  to  a  view  which  main- 
tains that  in  the  Universe,  as  we  know  it  and  try  to  know  it, 
it  is  order  and  not  chaos  which  rules.  This  is  the  presupposi- 
tion on  which  all  science  rests,  and,  in  fact,  it  stands  at  the 
background  of  all  attempts  at  consecutive  or  sane  thought.  For 
why  should  thought  be  consistent  or  contradiction  be  a  sign  of 
error  if  facts  are  not  in  rational  connection?  Pluralism,  admit- 
ting "real  indeterminations,  real  crises,  catastrophes  and 
escapes,"  might  conclude  to  a  finite  deity,  or  a  collection  of  such 
deities,  if  it  could  reliably  conclude  to  anything.  But  that,  of 
course,  it  cannot  do.  "Real  indeterminations"  may  intervene 
at  any  point.  If  the  Universe  is  one,  the  Absolute  of  philoso- 
phy is  one,  and  so  is  the  God  of  religion :  if  facts  are  not  ration- 
ally related  in  a  single  system,  reason  is  helpless. 

But  other,  and  possibly  better,  reasons  for  hesitating  to  iden- 
tify the  world-process  with  the  will  of  God  have  been  offered. 
Contingencies  have  been  admitted  to  enter  here  and  there  into 
the  general  scheme,  as  being  the  best  means  of  securing  the  con- 
ditions necessary  for  the  moral  life.  God  could  have  prevented 
them,  but  he  has  willed,  so  to  speak,  to  turn  his  back  and  let 
them  take  place;  he  has  assigned  to  contingency,  and  inconse- 
quences, and  irrationalism,  and  chaos,  a  domain  in  which  to  run 
amok.  He  has  "let  himself  go  into  his  opposite,"  as  Hegel 
once  suggested. 

The  realm  of  accident  were  thus  another  proof  of  his  wisdom 
and  goodness  and  power.  But,  I  may  ask,  if  it  is  purposed,  is 
it  a  realm  of  accident?  In  any  case  these  contingencies  are 
confined  to  the  moral  region.  Natural  law  permits  none  in  the 
physical  world.  Natural  laws  are  all  admitted  to  be  universal 
and  absolute.  But  nature,  it  is  held,  brings  no  reliable  support 
to  man's  ethical  aims.  The  natural  world,  with  its  rewards 
and  penalties,  may  support  morality  on  the  whole;  but  it  does 
not  do  so  in  detail.  Hence  the  moral  life  is  a  hazard,  and 
hardship,   and   venture   all  the  more   real  on   account  of  the 


236  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

looseness  of  the  relation  between  the  natural  and  the  spiritual 
world.  Life,  it  is  said,  furnishes  a  better  school  for  virtue,  tests 
man's  courage  more  ruthlessly,  gives  him  a  better  opportunity 
for  "showing  what  stuff  he  is  made  of,"  because  of  the  con- 
tingencies which  sweep  over  its  surface  like  sudden  storms.  By 
stultifying  his  foresight,  and  by  its  disregard  for  the  moral 
value  of  a  man's  deeds,  nature  teaches  him  not  to  trust  in,  or 
set  high  value  on,  anything  except  interests  which  are  spiritual. 
The  uncertainty  and  inconsequence,  the  extremity  of  the  ven- 
ture, turn  in  his  hands  into  opportunities.  He  will  cease  to 
calculate  consequences,  and  do  what  is  right  for  its  own  sake  all 
the  more  readily,  if  consequences  are  mere  contingencies. 

That  this  apparent  looseness  of  relation  between  the  natural 
and  the  ethical  spheres  exists  can  hardly  be  denied.  The  facts 
must  be  acknowledged.  While,  on  the  whole,  nature  upholds 
purposes  that  are  sane,  and  the  more  prosperous  people  turn  out 
to  be  on  the  whole  the  more  virtuous;  while,  in  other  words,  to 
act  reasonably  is  to  respect  the  laws  both  of  nature  and  of 
morality,  nevertheless  there  are  numberless  examples  of  the 
direct  collision  of  natural  and  moral  good.  By  simply  keeping 
silent  the  speculator  might  have  made  his  fortune:  that  good 
cause  has  cost  him  his  domestic  comfort,  his  material  prosperity, 
his  health,  or  even  his  life — such  are  the  things  we  are  often 
told.  And  the  conclusion  drawn  is  that  the  natural  scheme 
is  non-moral. 

But  to  admit  the  apparent  indifference  and  lack  of  all  con- 
nection is  one  thing — these  are  facts ;  to  call  them  contingencies 
is  another.  The  admission  of  contingencies  plays  such  havoc 
with  philosophic  theory  and  religious  faith,  and  the  results  of 
doing  so  are  so  stupendous  that  we  are  entitled  to  look  round 
for  some  other  way  of  accounting  for  the  facts  and  overcoming 
the  difficulties  they  raise. 

In  the  first  place,  then,  it  may  be  insisted  that  moral  law  is 
not  less  universal  and  necessary  than  natural  law.  Moral 
actions,  as  already  suggested,  have  moral  results  which  follow 
immediately  and  with  absolute  necessity.  The  dishonourable 
action  makes  the  man  dishonest  on  the  spot.     The  result  can 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  237 

neither  be  averted  nor  postponed.  But  we  constantly  confuse 
the  issues,  and  look  for  natural  results  to  follow  in  the  same 
way,  so  that  a  man  suffers  some  natural  punishment  when  he 
does  wrong,  as  promptly  as  he  burns  his  hand  if  he  puts  it  in 
the  fire.  We  would  demand  that  he  be  made  poorer  in  pocket, 
or  in  health,  or  in  general  esteem  and  influence,  whereas  it  is 
the  opposite  that  often  happens.  To  everj^  tree  its  own  fruit. 
It  is  the  natural  antecedent  that  will  bring  the  natural  conse- 
quent, and  it  is  moral  causes  that  have  moral  effects — so  far  as 
our  observation  of  the  individual  life  can  show.  On  the  larger 
scale  of  national  and  human  history,  I  admit  that  the  de- 
pendence of  natural  events  on  spiritual  antecedents  becomes 
more  plain.  But  we  infer,  all  too  hastily,  from  our  observa- 
tion of  the  individual  life,  that  natural  and  moral  facts  are  not 
connected,  and  that  anything  may  happen.  This  border  region 
between  the  natural  and  the  moral  is  supposed  to  be  the  play- 
ground of  contingencies.  No  one,  not  even  the  Absolute,  takes 
charge  of  it. 

But  the  difficulty  may  be  of  our  own  making.  The  error  of 
affirming  contingency  may  arise  from  the  expectation  of  neces- 
sary connection  where  none  is  required.  We  would  not  call  it 
a  contingency  that  an  apple  tree  does  not  grow  pears,  or  thistles, 
or  grapes.  The  moral  corruption  which  inevitably  ensues  upon 
moral  wrong-doing,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  inspiration  and 
strength  which  come  from  the  consciousness  of  right-doing  may 
be  in  themselves  adequate  consequences.  And  that  such  is  the 
case  is  an  assumption  on  which  morality  rests,  as  I  have  already 
tried  to  show. 

In  the  next  place,  I  would  observe  that  non-interference  is 
one  thing:  contingency  is  another.  It  is  possible  to  conceive 
God,  or  the  Absolute,  supplying  man  with  the  conditions  of  the 
good  life,  and  supporting  him,  in  the  sense  that  he  is  the  inex- 
haustible reservoir  of  power  to  which  man  can  turn  when  his 
strength  is  spent  or  his  courage  fails.  We  can  say  with  cer- 
tainty that  there  are  three  things  with  which  man  has  not  en- 
dowed himself:  they  are  gifts,  and  gifts  from  a  power  which 
itself  possessed  them.     These  are  (1)  the  spiritual  powers,  or 


238  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

the  rational  faculties,  implying  freedom  amongst  other  quali- 
ties; (2)  an  ever-changing  natural  and  social  environment,  by 
interaction  with  which  he  can  realize  his  powers  and  learn  to 
do  what  is  right;  (3)  a  desire  for  the  Best,  which  corresponds 
in  man  to  the  law  of  self-preservation  in  animals,  controlling 
every  choice  however  deeply  we  blunder  as  to  what  is  best,  or 
however  blind  we  are  to  the  fact  that  the  best  is  always  ethical 
or  spiritual  in  character.  Except  as  the  source  of  these  gifts, 
the  spring  at  which  man  may  always  slake  his  thirst,  God  may 
be  conceived  as  standing  aloof,  and  even  as  retaining  his  per- 
fection when  man  blunders.  On  this  view,  there  is  a  part 
which  God  fulfils  and  a  part  which  man  fulfils,  even  though 
the  spiritual  well-being  of  man  is  the  aim  of  both,  and  although 
the  vrill  of  man  may  be  one  with  the  will  of  God,  in  whose 
service  he  finds  freedom.  The  deed,  the  use  of  his  powers  and 
his  opportunities — except  that  these  are  given  to  him — are  ex- 
clusively the  individual's  own.  Neither  God  nor  his  fellow- 
man  can  take  up  his  burden  or  appropriate  the  value  of  the 
opportunity.  His  will  remains  free  and  independent  when  it 
concurs  and  obeys,  no  less  than  when  it  revolts  and  disobeys. 
And  if  we  have  regard  to  this  aspect  only,  we  can  represent 
the  sphere  in  which  he  exercises  his  will  as  left  to  him. 

This  line  of  argument  offers  a  very  alluring  way  out  of  the 
difficulty.  But  it  is  closed  by  the  considerations  which  arise 
from  the  side  of  religion.  It  is  intolerable  to  the  religious 
spirit  that  God  should  stand  aloof  unaffected  by  the  events  of 
the  moral  world,  as  this  view  would  imply.  After  all,  God's 
gifts  to  man  were  not  purposeless.  They  were  the  means  of 
his  spiritual  well-being.  And  if  that  well-being  is  not  secured, 
then  in  this  matter  God  himself  has  failed.  God's  gifts  in  that 
case,  it  might  be  said,  have  proved  scanty.  Another  environ- 
ment, another  set  of  circumstances  by  reference  to  which  the 
individual  could  react,  might  have  awakened  his  spiritual  in- 
terests, and  shown  that  the  Best  he  was  always  seeking  can  be 
nothing  but  the  moral  best.  He  must  have  more  and  differ- 
ent opportunities.  The  demands  of  another  station  in  another 
life,  and  possibly  in  another  world,  may  be  met  by  him  and 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  259 

his  soul  saved  thereby.  And  such  another  chance — the  chance 
that  immortalitj'  brings — will  be  given  by  a  perfect  God  whose 
purposes  must  not  come  to  naught.  At  any  rate  the  alterna- 
tive of  the  immortality  of  man's  soul  seems  much  more  prob- 
able than  that  of  the  defeat  of  the  purpose  of  the  God  of  Love. 
And  in  any  case  there  are  no  events  in  the  moral,  any  more 
than  in  the  natural,  region  which  we  can  justly  call  contin- 
gencies, unless  we  mean  by  that  phrase,  to  characterize,  not  the 
event  as  itself  having  no  cause  or  no  constant  antecedent,  but 
our  own  ignorance.  A  man's  deeds  spring  from  his  character. 
They  are  his  way  of  meeting  the  wants  he  believes  he  has  dis- 
covered in  himself:  the  results  of  his  own  self-interpretation. 
They  have  antecedents  in  him,  and  they  have  consequences  upon 
him;  and  although  owing  to  the  complexity  of  human  char- 
acter we  cannot  foretell  a  man's  volutions,  still  they  depend  on 
what  he  is  and  are  not  contingencies.  The  rigour  and  univer- 
sality of  law  in  matters  of  spirit  are  in  no  sense  or  degree  less 
than  they  are  in  physical  matters;  and  the  admission  of  sheer 
accident  would  have  analogous  consequences.  "If  you  are  will- 
ing to  be  inconsistent,"  says  Mr.  Bradley,  "you  can  never  be 
refuted."  ^  If  by  calling  an  event  an  accident  or  contingency, 
we  mean  simply  that  the  causes  of  its  occurrence  were  not  an- 
ticipated or  are  not  known,  then  we  are  dealing  with  a  confes- 
sion of  ignorance  which  all  of  us  can  make  every  day  of  our  lives. 
But  the  doctrine  we  have  referred  to  implies  more.  It  affirms 
that  events  do  take  place  in  incalculable  ways.  Their  incal- 
culability  is  the  truth  concerning  them.  We  should  err  if  we 
sought  their  cause,  or  assumed  that  they  had  any  particular 
antecedent,  or  were  determined  by  any  specific  conditions.  The 
former  attitude  is  consistent  with  the  effort  to  acquire  fuller 
knowledge.  The  latter  stultifies  every  such  eflfort,  arrests  and 
paralyses  it  at  the  first  outset.  For  on  that  view,  to  know, 
that  is,  to  discover  the  relation  of  a  fact  to  reality  as  a  whole, 
were  to  discover  an  illusion :  it  is  presumed  from  the  beginning 
that  the  event  or  fact  is  unrelated.  That  reality  constitutes  one 
system,  that  the  system  is  all-inclusive,  that  within  it  all  its  parts 

^Truth  and  Reality,  p.  235. 


240  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

have  free  play  and  full  function,  and  that  these  parts  or 
elements  so  agree  as  to  be  rationally  coherent — this  I  have 
taken  for  granted  all  along. 

I  have  not  discussed  the  view  that  realia  are  particulars,  that 
we  begin  with  the  many  and  must  find  the  one,  that  the  relation 
between  the  particulars,  the  unities,  are  really  mental  fabrica- 
tions, that  objects  are  independent,  owing  nothing  to  each  other. 
All  the  forms  of  Pluralism  I  have  set  aside.  The  whole  pro- 
cess of  thinking,  as  illustrated  most  clearly,  perhaps,  in  the 
natural  sciences,  begins  and  ends  with  the  conception  of  unity 
in  differences,  that  is,  of  system.  There  is  no  science,  nor  the 
promise  of  it,  until  there  is  a  colligating  hypothesis — as  I  have 
tried  to  show.  Prior  to  that  we  have  nothing  but  a  collection 
of  facts,  which  are  more  or  less  similar  to  one  another.  Same- 
ness, on  this  view,  is  the  only  kind  of  universal  that  is  con- 
ceived :  and  the  idea  of  a  principle  which  is  active,  breaks  out 
into  differences,  gives  to  the  elements  within  the  whole  their 
character  and  their  function,  is  in  truth  not  considered.  For 
Idealism,  on  the  other  hand,  this  is  the  only  type  of  principle 
which  counts:  and  the  same  is  true  of  the  special  sciences. 
They  are  founded  upon  hypotheses;  they  start  from  the  assump- 
tion of  a  concrete  system:  their  whole  task  is  to  apply  that 
hypothesis,  testing  it  by  reference  to  particular  facts,  and  seek- 
ing in  it,  at  the  same  time,  the  real  meaning  of  these  facts. 

It  is  evident  that  to  one  who  occupies  this  point  of  view, 
whether  as  a  philosopher  or  as  a  scientific  man,  the  admission 
of  contingencies,  of  even  one  sheer  contingency,  is  disastrous. 
To  do  so  is  like  breaking  the  string  on  which  pearls  are  hung. 
It  does  not  matter  at  what  point  or  how  many  times  the  string 
is  cut,  there  results  the  same  chaos. 

We  cannot  admit  contingencies  and  retain  the  uses  of  reason. 
Philosophy  and  science  become  impossible,  for  at  any  point  there 
may  be  an  intrusion  of  that  which  negates  their  use.  And  it 
is  questionable  if  religion  will  then  survive  at  a  less  cost  than 
that  of  admitting  the  finitude  of  God,  and  attributing  to  at 
least  a  portion  of  the  world-process  an  irrational  spontaneity. 
Events  that  are  not  cannot  create  themselves;  nor  can  they 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  241 

come  from  nothing,  having  no  antecedent.  Is  it  not  likely,  see- 
ing that  no  one  ever  discovered  such  events,  and  there  is  no 
science,  philosophy,  or  religion  vi^hich  can  consistently  search 
for  them,  that  we  have  no  evidence  that  they  exist? 

The  refuge  in  the  idea  of  occurrences  outwith  the  principle 
that  manifests  itself  in  the  v^^orld-process  cannot  be  justified  by 
any  ethical  considerations.  It  is  to  seek  shelter  under  the  vv^ings 
of  v^^hat  is  irrational.  Rather  than  seek  such  a  vi^ay  of  escape, 
it  vrere  better  to  admit  one's  failure.  Only  that  course  re- 
quires courage.  There  can  be  no  doubt  of  the  demands  of 
reason  or  of  philosophy.  The  Absolute  leaves  no  room  for  its 
absolute  "other,"  which  a  contingency  would  be.  The  Absolute 
is  not  at  all,  if  it  be  not  all-comprehensive:  there  is  then  no 
Universe,  or  the  Universe  is  not  a  "single  system,"  and  philos- 
ophy and  the  sciences  are  out  on  an  impossible  mission. 

But  are  we  justified  in  the  course  which  we  have  followed 
throughout  these  lectures?  Have  we  a  right  thus  to  identify 
the  Absolute  of  philosophy  with  the  God  of  religion?  I  must 
try  to  answer  this  question  in  the  next  lecture. 


LECTURE  XVIII 

GOD  AND   THE   ABSOLUTE 

I  ENDED  the  last  lecture  with  a  question.  I  asked  if  we  were 
justified  in  identifying  the  God  of  religion  with  the  Absolute 
of  philosophy,  as  has  been  done  throughout  our  whole  course. 
Is  it  true  that  our  intellectual  and  our  religious  needs  find  sat- 
isfaction at  the  same  ultimate  surce?  Will  the  yearnings  of 
"the  heart"  be  stilled  by  the  same  conception  of  reality  as  that 
to  which  the  frank  and  rigorous  use  of  the  methods  of  reason 
points?  Or  must  we  distinguish  between  God  and  the 
Absolute? 

The  same  problem  meets  us  in  another  form.  What  is  the 
relation  of  Love  and  Reason,  and  what  are  their  respective 
functions?  It  is  generally  assumed  that  religion  is  not  less 
obviously  an  affair  of  the  emotions  than  philosophy  is  of  the 
intellect.  A  religion  that  leaves  the  worshipper  cold  and  in- 
different and  self-centred  fails  just  as  hopelessly  as  the  philoso- 
phy which  does  not  satisfy  the  demands  of  reason.  Emotion 
appears  thus  to  have  a  place  and  function  in  religion  which  it 
does  not  claim,  and  which  would  not  be  readily  conceded  to  it 
in  a  philosophical  theory.  This  fact  is  usually  overlooked  by 
philosophers,  and  to  do  so  is  an  error;  for,  although  in  the  last 
resort  the  whole  man  is  involved  in  all  his  moods  and  activities, 
the  differences  between  these  still  remain.  There  are  many 
different  ways  in  which  the  spirit  of  man  expresses  itself,  just 
as  there  are  many  different  kinds  of  reality  to  which  it  is  called 
to  respond. 

As  to  the  relation  of  God  and  the  Absolute,  Mr.  Bradley 
says  quite  roundly    (as  is  his  admirable  way),   "For  me  the 

242 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  243 

Absolute  is  not  God.  God  for  me  has  no  meaning  outside  of 
the  religious  consciousness,  and  that  essentially  is  practical. 
The  Absolute  for  me  cannot  be  God,  because  in  the  end  the 
Absolute  is  related  to  nothing,  and  there  cannot  be  a  practical 
relation  between  it  and  the  finite  will.  When  you  begin  to 
worship  the  Absolute  or  the  Universe,  and  make  it  the  object 
of  religion,  you  in  that  moment  have  transformed  it.  It  has 
become  something  forthwith  which  is  less  than  the  Universe,"  ^ 
There  are  thus  two  supreme  beings — the  Absolute  which  Mr. 
Bradley  identifies  with  the  Universe  and  with  the  reality  to 
which  speculative  research  leads;  and  God,  who  is  something 
less  than  the  Universe  and  everything  to  religion.  The  Ab- 
solute is  related  to  nothing,  and  there  cannot  be  a  practical 
relation  between  it  and  the  finite  will.  Nothing  stands  over 
against  the  Absolute.  All  that  exists  is  part  of  its  content. 
God,  on  the  other  hand,  must  stand  in  relation  to  my  will. 
Religion  is  practical.  There  is  a  perfect  will,  and  there  is  my 
will ;  and  the  practical  relation  of  these  wills  is  what  we  mean 
by  religion.  And  yet,  if  perfection  is  realized,  what  becomes 
of  my  will,  which  is  over  against  the  complete  Good  Will? 
While,  on  the  other  hand,  if  there  is  no  such  Will,  what  be- 
comes of  God? 

Mr.  Bradley  refuses  the  escape  offered  by  the  idea  of  reject- 
ing the  Perfection  of  God,  and,  instead,  accepts  as  final  a  fun- 
damental contradiction  in  religion.  Religion  demands  and  at 
the  same  time  rejects  a  perfect  God.  God's  will  expresses 
itself  in  the  activity  of  man,  and  yet  it  must  stand  over  against 
the  will  of  finite  beings.  Mr.  Bradley  emphatically  insists  that 
the  real  presence  of  God's  will  in  mine,  our  actual  and  literal 
satisfaction  in  common,  must  not  in  any  case  be  denied  or  im- 
paired. This  is  a  religious  truth,  he  adds,  "far  more  essential 
than  God's  personality."  But  is  it  compatible  with  his 
personality? 

Mr.  Bradley's  affirmation  of  the  personality,  whether  of 
God  or  man,  is  almost  always  hesitating  and  qualified;  and  he 
denies   altogether   the  personality  of   the  Absolute.      He  also 

^Truth  and  Reality,  p.  428. 


244  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

speaks  of  the  super-personal,  a  word  to  which  I  can  attach  no 
definite  meaning  at  all.  "A  God  that  can  say  to  himself  T 
as  against  you  and  me,  is  not  in  my  judgment  defensible  as  the 
last  and  complete  truth  for  Metaphysics." '  "The  highest 
Reality,  so  far  as  I  see,  must  be  super-personal."  ^  It  is  on  this 
matter  of  the  significance  of  personality  that  I  differ  most 
deeply  from  Mr.  Bradley — if  I  understand  him  correctly. 

But  I  must  first  refer  to  another  matter.  Mr.  Bradley 
denies  that  "Religion  has  to  be  consistent  theoretically."  If 
we  seek  consistency,  we  will  be  "driven  to  a  limited  God."  But 
apparently  we  ought  not  to  seek  it.  We  should  be  content,  so 
far  as  religion  is  concerned,  with  contradiction.  He  is  con- 
vinced that  there  are  "no  absolute  truths,"  and  that  "on  the 
other  side  there  are  no  mere  errors.  Subject  to  a  further  ex- 
planation, all  truth  and  all  error  on  my  view  may  be  called 
relative,  and  the  difference  between  them  in  the  end  is  one  of 
degree."  ° 

The  defect  of  what  we  call  truth  arises  from  its  incomplete- 
ness. Something  is  always  left  out  by  us.  It  is  abstract ;  above 
all  it  omits  its  own  opposite;  and  "with  every  truth  there  still 
remains  some  truth,  however  little,  in  its  opposite."  *  "The 
idea  that  in  the  special  sciences,  and  again  in  practical  life,  we 
have  absolute  truths,  must  be  rejected  as  illusory.  We  are 
everywhere  dependent  on  what  may  be  called  useful  mythology, 
and  nothing  other  than  these  inconsistent  ideas  could  serve  our 
various  purposes.  These  ideas  are  false  in  the  sense  that  they 
are  not  ultimately  true.  But  they  are  true  in  the  sense  that  all 
that  is  lacking  to  them  is  a  greater  or  less  extent  of  completion, 
which,  the  more  true  they  are,  would  the  less  transform  their 
present  character.  And,  in  proportion  as  the  need  to  which 
they  answer  is  wider  and  deeper,  these  ideas  already  have  at- 
tained actual  truth." " 

It  is  not  possible  to  deny  that  all  our  knowledge  is  incom- 
plete. It  is  also,  in  the  last  resort,  hypothetical.  But  it  is  an- 
other thing  to  admit  that  there  is  no  difference  between  truth 

^Truth  and  Reality,  p.   432.  -Ibid,   p.   436.  'Ibid,  p.  452. 

*Ibid.   p.   253.  ^Ibid,  pp.  430-1. 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  245 

and  error  except  a  difference  of  "degree."  True  ideas,  as  Mr. 
Bradley  admits  in  the  last  sentence  I  quote  from  him,  answer 
to  needs.  That  is  to  say,  they  fit  into,  are  consistent  with,  find 
a  place  within  our  conception  of  reality  as  a  systematic  whole. 
What  we  take  for  error  refuses  to  do  so.  I  admit  that  our 
conception  of  the  system  may  be  false,  but  I  also  affirm  that 
although  incomplete  it  may  nevertheless  be  true.  By  incom- 
pleteness we  mean  simply  that  the  elements  which  are  its  con- 
tent are  not  fully  known.  In  a  word,  the  conception  formed 
of  the  whole  would  be  "general"  and  in  that  sense  abstract. 
Our  knowledge,  as  I  have  shown,  rests  on  a  hypothesis,  and  the 
hypothesis  is  always  on  its  trial.  Its  incompleteness  is  incom- 
pleteness, and  not  error.  Our  knowledge  does  not  misrepre- 
sent, although  it  omits. 

Understood  in  this  way,  the  quest  for  consistency  in  our 
thought  of  religion,  as  in  all  our  thinking,  is  not  a  matter  of 
choice.  We  are  always  seeking  consistency.  We  cannot  rest  in 
contradictions.  But  we  can  be  content  with  opposites.  We 
may  hold  that  two  truths  may  differ,  and  on  that  very  account 
supplement  and  complete  each  other.  Indeed,  I  am  not  con- 
vinced that  we  ever  do  reach  the  truth  before  we  can  state 
"both  sides,"  and  find  that  each  of  the  opposites  demands  and 
exists  in  virtue  of  the  other. 

Religion  amply  illustrates  this  fact.  Affirm  nothing  but  the 
unity  of  the  divine  and  human  will,  or,  on  the  other  hand, 
affirm  nothing  but  their  independence  of  each  other,  and  re- 
ligion becomes  impossible.  The  truth  is  that  the  union  of  wills 
can  take  place  only  if  they  are  independent.  It  is  their  con- 
currence that  makes  them  one,  and  they  cannot  concur  if  either 
of  them  is  not  free.  There  are  many  ways  of  uniting  and  dis- 
uniting chemical  elements;  but  nothing  can  unite  wills  except 
the  adoption  of  the  same  purpose  by  free  agents.  And  the 
adoption  of  a  purpose  is  an  affair  of  the  individual  as  a  separate 
being.  Only  wills  that  are  free  can  truly  unite.  A  society 
of  slaves  has  very  little  coherence,  and  has  at  no  period  of  the 
world's  history  been  powerful  for  either  good  or  evil. 

But  the  mutual  inclusion  of  persons,  that  is,  of  self-conscious 


246  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

individuals,   is,   unless   I   err,   possible  in   the  opinion  of   Mr. 
Bradley  only  at  the  expense  of  their  independence  and  individ- 
uality.    In  my  opinion,  on  the  other  hand,  their  common  life 
deepens  their  individuality,  and  strengthens  them  as  independ- 
ent persons.     And  here  lies  the  central  issue.    The  more  a  man 
is  the  voice  of  his  times  and  people,  and  of  what,  at  their  best, 
they  are  striving  to  be,  the  greater  he  is  as  an  individual.     He 
is  a  more  significant  unit,  because  of  the  extent  of  the  common 
elements.     Mr.  Bradley  argues,  quite  correctly  so  far  as  I  can 
see,  that  if  w^e  assume  that  "individual  men,  yourself  and  my- 
self, are  real  each  in  his  ow^n  right,  to  speak  of  God  as  having 
reality  in  the  religious  consciousness  is  nonsense."  ^     That  is 
to  say,  if  men  are  separate  individuals,  then  God  must  be  still 
another   separate    individual,    and    the    "indwelling"    or    "im- 
manence" of  God,  which  is  essential  to  religion,  cannot  be.   But 
Mr.  Bradley  goes  on  to  prove  that  men  are  not  independent 
individuals  or  separate  beings.     "The  independent  reality  of 
the  individual    .    .    .    is  in  truth  mere  illusion.     Apart  from 
the  community,  what  are  separate  men?     It  is  the  common 
mind  within  him  which  gives  reality  to  the  human  being:  and 
taken   by  himself,   whatever  else  he   is,   he  is  not   human."  * 
Then  he  proceeds  further  to  enforce  the  truth  which  many 
years  ago  he  stated  in  his  Ethical  Studies  in  a  manner  calcu- 
lated to  lift  it  beyond  the  reach  of  controversy.     Even  when 
an  individual  sets  himself  against  society,  it  is  on  the  resources 
of  his  society  that  he  draws:  he  has  not  a  shred  that  is  ex- 
clusively his  own.     "When   he  opposes  himself   to   the  com- 
munity it  is  still  the  whole  which  lives  and  moves  in  discord 
within  him,  for  by  himself  he  is  an  abstraction  without  life  or 
force."  °    If  this  be  true  of  the  social  consciousness  in  its  various 
forms,  it  is  true  certainly  no  less  of  that  common  mind  which 
is  more  than  social.     In  art,  in  science  and  in  religion,  the  in- 
dividual by  himself  still  remains  an  abstraction.     The  finite 
minds  that  in  and  for  religion  form  one  spiritual  whole  have 
indeed  in  the  end  no  visible  embodiment,  and  yet,  except  as 
members   in   an   invisible  community,   they   are   nothing  real. 

^Truth  and  Reality,  pp.  434-5.  -Ibid.  ^Ibid.  p.  435, 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  247 

For  religion,  in  short,  if  the  one  indwelling  spirit  is  removed, 
there  are  no  spirits  left.  "The  Supreme  Will  for  good  which 
is  experienced  within  finite  minds  is  an  obvious  fact,  and  it  is 
the  doubt  as  to  anything  in  the  whole  world  being  more  actual 
than  this,  which  seems  most  to  call  for  enquiry."  * 

I  admit  all  this  readily,  and  gratefully:  I  first  learnt  it  from 
Mr.  Bradley  many  years  ago.  But  I  cannot  admit  that  the 
participation  of  individuals  in  common  elements  lessens  either 
their  independence  or  their  individuality.  Least  of  all  when, 
as  is  evident,  that  participation  is  not  possible  except  by  the 
rational  adoption  of  these  common  elements,  that  is  to  say, 
except  by  the  exercise  of  powers  which  are  intensely  individual. 
If  my  community  is  to  live  in  me,  /  must  interpret  its  meaning, 
/  must  adopt  its  traditions  and  creeds,  /  must  make  its  ends 
my  personal  purposes.  And  every  one  of  these  activities  is 
personal  and,  in  a  sense,  private  and  exclusive.  In  this  reaction 
the  material  offered  by  the  community  is  recreated  by  me;  and 
the  reaction  at  once  enriches  the  communal  store,  and  exercises 
and  develops  my  individual  powers. 

But  this  aspect  of  the  truth  is  not  recognized  by  Mr. 
Bradley,  though,  at  times,  he  seems  to  accept  both  sides.  "I 
cannot,  for  one  thing,"  he  says,  "deny  the  relation  in  religion 
between  God  and  finite  minds,  and  how  to  make  this  relation 
external,  or  again  to  include  it  in  God's  personality,  I  do  not 
know.  The  highest  Reality,  so  far  as  I  see,  must  be  super- 
personal.  At  the  same  time,  to  many  minds  practical  religion 
seems  to  call  for  the  belief  in  God  as  a  separate  individual." ' 
Mr.  Bradley  himself  can  accept  this  belief  only  if,  in  the  first 
place,  its  practical  value  is  clear,  and,  in  the  second  place,  if 
it  is  supplemented  by  other  beliefs  which  really  contradict  it. 
And  these  beliefs,  I  must  add,  are  most  vital  to  religion.  He 
then  proceeds  to  indicate  some  of  these  beliefs.  He  shows  how 
much  the  Universe  would  be  impoverished  if  the  Maker  and 
Sustainer  were  not  also  the  indwelling  Life  and  Mind  of  the 
inspiring  Love.  But  he  cannot  reconcile  this  "pantheism,"  as 
he  calls  it   (which  to  me  also  is  priceless),  with  a  God  who 

^Ibid.  ^Truth  and  Reality,  p.  436. 


248  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

is  personal  and  individual.  "The  so-called  'pantheism'  which 
breathes  through  much  of  our  poetry  and  art  is  no  less  vitally 
implied  in  religious  practice.  Banish  all  that  is  meant  by  the 
indwelling  Spirit  of  God  in  its  harmony  and  discord  with  the 
finite  soul,  and  what  death  and  desolation  has  taken  the  place 
of  living  religion !  But  how  this  Spirit  can  be  held  con- 
sistently with  an  external  individuality,  is  a  problem  which 
has  defied  solution."  * 

But,  I  would  ask,  is  personality  ever  "external";  or  is  such 
a  personality  an  unreal  creation  of  our  own,  fashioned  by 
taking  account  of  only  one  aspect  of  a  person,  namely,  the 
subjective?  If  personality  means,  as  I  take  it,  a  rational  sub- 
ject conscious  of  itself  and  of  its  world  as  an  object,  then  it 
does  not  stand  in  an  external  relation  to  anything  whatsoever. 
Self-consciousness  is  essentially  that  which  overpowers  external 
relations.  Man  as  a  rational  being  goes  out  of  himself,  so  to 
speak,  so  as  to  know  and  use  objects  (and  there  can  exist  noth- 
ing which  is  not  potentially  his  object),  but  he  always  returns 
to  himself  enriched,  for  he  brings  back  as  a  part  of  his  own 
experience  something  of  the  meaning  and  use  of  the  facts  he 
has  been  dealing  with.  Not  only  so :  there  is  nothing  save  self- 
consciousness  which  does  overcome  external  relations.  It  alone 
achieves  unity  in  difference.  Self-consciousness  is  one  with  it- 
self only  through  its  relation  to  objects;  for  a  subject  that  has 
no  object,  that  does  not  say  "I"  as  over  against  something  else, 
is  not  possible.  In  denying  personality,  or  self-consciousness 
to  the  Absolute,  Mr.  Bradley  is  thus  permitting  external  rela- 
tions to  be  final;  and  his  Universe  is  in  no  sense  a  unity.  Its 
differences  cannot  be  made  to  come  together.  Everything 
within  it  holds  everything  else  at  arm's  length.  The  ultimate 
relation  between  its  elements  is  negative ;  and  the  Universe  is, 
at  best,  a  mere  collection  of  particulars. 

To  arrive  at  the  truth  of  this  matter  we  must  restore  to 
self -consciousness  all  its  functions.  In  order  to  do  so  it  is  not 
necessary  to  reduce  the  debt  of  the  individual  man  to  his  com- 
munity, or  his  dependence  upon  it  for  the  living  experience 

Ubid.  p.  437. 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  249 

which  enters  into  his  powers;  nor  is  it  necessary  to  impoverish 
the  Universe  by  denying  the  pantheistic  conceptions  which  are 
implied  in  the  "indwelling  spirit  of  God."  Every  word  said 
by  Mr.  Bradley  on  this  aspect  of  the  ultimate  reality  seems  to 
me  to  be  true;  but  not  less  true  is  that  activity  of  the  self- 
conscious  being  by  which  alone  he  converts  his  world  into  his 
own  experience  and  establishes  his  "separate"  individuality.  It 
seems  to  me  obvious  that  an  Absolute  which  was  not  a  person, 
that  is,  not  a  self-conscious  individual,  could  not  be  immanent 
in  a  world  of  objects,  or  reveal  itself  in  its  processes. 

Now,  these  two  aspects  seemed  to  Mr.  Bradley  to  be  not 
only  opposites  but  contradictory,  and  therefore  could  be  re- 
conciled or  even  held  simultaneously.  Their  co-existence,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  was  a  matter  of  which  the  intelligence  could 
make  nothing.  "The  immanence  of  the  Absolute  in  finite 
centres  and  of  finite  centres  in  the  Absolute,  I  have  always  set 
down,"  he  says,  "as  inexplicable."  He  cannot  maintain  the 
personality  both  of  the  Absolute  and  of  man,  or  recognize  them 
as  complementary;  so  he  denies  both  alike. 

Now,  what  I  would  wish  to  make  clear  is  that  this  mutual 
indwelling,  or  possession,  is  the  condition  of  spiritual  existence, 
and  of  rational  personality.  It  is  illustrated,  and  practically 
explained,  by  the  many  ways  in  which  the  mutual  participation 
takes  place.  The  more  a  man  enters  the  life  of  others,  the 
richer  his  own  life.  His  uniqueness  or  difFerence  from  others 
is  the  greater,  the  more  he  adopts  and  enlarges  and  carries 
out  the  ends  of  their  common  giver.  Every  deepening  of  unity 
in  difference  exemplifies  the  process.  Science  is  quite  familiar 
with  the  fact  that  "integration  and  differentiation"  go  to- 
gether, and  are  double  aspects  of  one  and  the  same  process. 
The  growth  of  learning,  or  of  spiritual  power  of  any  other 
kind,  shows  the  operation  of  the  same  tendency.  As  a  man 
grows  in  wisdom,  experience  becomes  at  once  more  consistent 
and  more  wide  of  range. 

Of  course  the  fact  is  unintelligible  if  the  "either-or"  attitude 
of  thought  is  final.  But  it  is  not.  "Either-or"  plainly  implies 
"system."     That  each  points  beyond  itself  is  proved  by  the 


250  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

fact  that  each  needs  its  opposite  and  exists  only  in  virtue  of  it. 
Were  it  not  for  its  relation  to  man,  the  Absolute  were  not 
Absolute,  and  vice  versa.  The  Absolute  realizes  itself  in  finite 
centres;  and  more  fully  in  that  finite  centres  are  spiritual,  and 
that  man  is  man  only  in  virtue  of  the  indwelling  of  his  God. 
The  religious  spirit  is  awakened  whenever  it  apprehends  this 
truth.  It  then  seeks  its  own  realization  through  obedience  to 
God's  will. 

Whenever  we  have  such  mutual  implication  on  the  part  of 
opposites,  we  are,  in  truth,  dealing  with  system,  i.e.  with  a  unity 
that  has  neither  reality  nor  meaning  except  in  the  different 
elements,  and  with  differences  that  are  intelligible  only  when 
considered  in  their  place  in  the  system.  And  if  we  only  follow 
our  thoughts  out,  we  shall  find  that  in  the  end  every  one  of 
our  ideas  is  a  system.  Every  sentence  is  a  system,  every  proof, 
every  theory,  every  rational  statement;  and  so  is  every  fact. 
Rational  experience  on  the  one  side,  and  the  Universe  on  the 
other,  is  a  system  of  systems.  The  relation  of  finite  centres  to 
the  Absolute  is  but  the  supreme  example  of  a  fact  which  is 
universal. 

The  importance  of  this  result  is  great.  It  means  that  philos- 
ophy, instead  of  finding  in  religion  a  self-contradictory  and  un- 
mtelligible  fact,  discovers  that  religion  attains,  as  at  a  leap,  the 
results  which  it  itself  seeks  by  toilsome  methods.  The  in- 
telligence is  always,  if  its  work  is  prospering,  finding  some 
deeper  unity  amongst  wider  elements,  or  new  qualities  and 
features  in  the  unity.  Here  in  the  object  of  religion  the  unity 
is  ^//-comprehensive,  and  within  it  all  difiFerences  are,  in  the 
last  resort,  harmonized.  Religion  teaches  the  apparently  im- 
possible maxim — "If  you  would  save  your  life,  lose  it."  "Give 
yourself  if  you  desire  to  find  yourself."  "Live!  live  the  full 
and  the  best  life.  Attain  an  altitude  where  it  is  not  you  that 
lives  but  God  lives  and  works  in  you."  But  philosophy  by 
means  of  its  conception  of  an  ever  self-difiEerentiating  Absolute 
sustains  the  religious  consciousness.  It  shows  that  religion  so 
far  from  differing  from,  or  contradicting,  ordinary  rational  ex- 
perience is  continuous  with  that  experience,  and  differs  from  it 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  251 

only  in  that  it  is  more  complete  and  perfect.  It  is  a  very  great 
matter  for  religion  thus  to  gain  the  support  of  the  enquiring 
intellect,  and  it  is  a  great  matter  for  philosophy  that  its  en- 
quiries, in  the  degree  in  which  they  are  sincere  and  thorough, 
support  the  religious  view.  The  theoretical  attitude  then  sup- 
ports the  practical  attitude  of  man  towards  the  Universe,  and 
he  thereby  attains  the  deepest  peace  and  the  greatest  spiritual 
good. 

"God,"  says  Mr.  Bradley,  "for  me  has  no  meaning  outside 
of  the  religious  consciousness,  and  that  essentially  is  prac- 
tical." *  And,  apparently,  theoretical  inconsistency  is  of  com- 
paratively small  consequence  in  religion.  All  that  matters  is 
that  its  tenets  should  prove  practical.  "To  insist  on  ultimate 
theoretical  consistency  .    .    .  becomes  once  for  all  ridiculous."  * 

I  admit  the  difference  of  the  theoretical  and  practical,  though 
as  a  matter  of  fact  they  are  both  practical  or  purposive,  as  I 
have  already  shown.  But  I  cannot  admit  that  what  is  theo- 
retically unsatisfactory  can  be  practically  effective.  We  cannot 
act  on  ideas  which  we  have  detected  to  be  mutually  destructive. 
And  if  the  last  word  which  theory  or  philosophy  can  say  of 
religion  is  that  it  is  inconsistent,  then  religion  is  left  impotent 
for  all  practical  good. 

No  doubt  the  distinction  between  the  religious  attitude  and 
the  philosophic  is  real.  Religion  like  other  practical  interests 
(of  which  it  is  supreme)  is  confronted  with  its  fundamental 
presuppositions  only  occasionally;  while  the  philosopher,  so  to 
speak,  is  always  fighting  with  his  back  to  the  wall  and  dealing 
with  ultimate  issues.  In  this  sense  a  man's  God  is  rarely 
absolute  or  all-comprehensive,  one  with  the  nature  of  things, 
or  the  ultimate  living  reality  which  expresses  itself  in  the 
ever-changing  universe.  God  is  man's  immediate  help :  in  him 
is  satisfied  the  need  which  happens  to  be  urgent  and  impera- 
tive. He  is  man's  leader  in  battle;  or  the  judge  between  him 
and  his  enemies,  or  his  instrument  of  revenge.  Is  the  punish- 
ment of  the  powerful  enemy  the  primary  need  ?  Then  he  calls 
his  God  forward.     "Let  death  seize  upon  them,  and  let  them 

^Truth  and  Reality,  p.  428.  ^Ibid.  p.  431. 


252  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

go  down  quick  into  hell.  ...  As  for  me,  I  will  call  upon  God ; 
and  the  Lord  shall  save  me."  ^  God  is  at  first  the  creation  of 
the  present  passion — as  we  have  seen;  and  it  is  only  little  by 
little,  in  the  course  of  centuries,  that  he  comes  to  represent  the 
interests  that  are  universal,  and  to  comprise  within  himself  all 
the  conditions  of  well-being.  Inconsistency  in  rudimentary 
religion  is  thus,  in  truth,  of  little  moment ;  but  as  the  religious 
consciousness  develops,  the  demand  that  its  God  shall  be  per- 
fect in  every  way,  infinite  both  in  power  and  in  goodness,  be- 
comes more  and  more  imperious.  The  religion  of  the  future 
cannot  afford  to  be  inconsistent.  It  must  justify  itself  at  the 
bar  of  reason,  and  prove  that  it  has  its  place  within  "the  uni- 
versal system,"  and  a  function  of  its  own,  if  it  is  to  maintain 
its  hold  of  the  practical  life  of  mankind. 

This  demand  for  absolute  perfection  which  an  enlightened 
religion  makes  is  met  in  Christianity  by  the  conception  of  a 
God  of  Love  who  is  also  omnipotent.  In  him  all  spiritual  and 
natural  perfections  meet.  He  is,  in  fact,  the  same  being  as  the 
"Absolute"  of  the  philosopher.  And  both  philosophy  and  re- 
ligion would  gain  by  recognizing  this  fact.  But  the  Perfect 
Being  whose  attributes  satisfy  the  intelligence  has  had  com- 
paratively little  place  in  our  religious  creeds;  and  the  philoso- 
pher on  his  part,  in  contemplating  religion,  has  made  little 
count  of  love,  or  of  any  other  sentiment  or  emotion.  One 
reason  for  this  fact  is  the  misuse  made  of  love  by  religious 
apologists.  They  have  made  feeling  bear  testimony  to  the 
truth  of  their  religious  beliefs.  But  to  act  as  a  witness  is  not 
the  function  of  feeling.  No  judge,  if  he  can  help  it,  will  give 
it  a  place  either  in  the  witness  box  or  on  the  bench.  He  will 
not  acquit  or  condemn  a  man  because  a  witness  feels  that  he 
has,  or  has  not,  stolen  the  article.  And  feeling,  whether  it  be 
love  or  hate,  can  no  more  testify  to  the  truth  in  religious  mat- 
ters than  in  secular.  On  the  contrary,  it  distorts,  blinds, 
renders  even  the  truthful  man  untrustworthy.  Love  can  find 
every  perfection  where  sober  sight  sees  little  but  defects.  It 
can  arise  from  or  attach  itself  to  the  most  undeserving  object. 

iPsalm   Iv.    IS.   16. 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  253 

And  the  history  of  religion  gives  ample  evidence  that  mankind 
has  reverenced,  worshipped,  adored  and  loved  all  kinds  of 
unworthy  gods. 

Nevertheless  love  has  its  own  place  and  part  to  fill,  and  a 
most  significant  function  in  religion ;  and  I  am  inclined  to  think 
that  philosophers  have  overlooked  this  fact.  Neither  the  in- 
telligence nor  aught  else  can  discharge  that  function.  We 
would  recognize  at  once  the  cold,  forbidding  character  of  a 
domestic  hearth  where  everyone  completely  understood  every- 
one else,  but  had  neither  love  nor  liking  for  him.  It  were  the 
same  in  religion.  Even  had  man  that  complete  comprehension 
of  his  God,  or  of  the  Absolute  which  philosophy  seeks,  and  the 
full  splendour  of  the  divine  nature  could  break  upon  him,  unless 
there  were  love,  the  attitude  of  man  towards  his  God  would 
not  be  religious.  Men  may  know  their  God  and  fear  him; 
instead  of  seeking  him,  they  may  wish  to  flee  and  hide  from 
him.  But  they  cannot  worship  a  "loveless  God."  They 
recognize  that  "a  loving  worm  within  its  clod"  were  diviner 
than  such  a  deity.  For  love  is  one  of  those  facts  which  has 
ultimate  and  absolute  and  unborrowed  value.  Man  may  obey 
the  divine  commands  from  a  sense  of  duty,  as  demands  made 
by  an  autocratic  will ;  and  God  might  care  for  the  creatures 
he  has  called  into  being,  from  a  sense  of  justice.  But  religion 
does  not  come  in  till  love  enters  and  rules. 

Now  I  am  disposed  to  think  that  it  is  only  on  one  condition 
that  philosophy  can  conclude  that  God  is  love.  It  has  to  find 
operation  of  love  amongst  its  data.  And  it  must  look  to 
religion;  for  this  datum  is  supplied  most  unambiguously  by  the 
religious  consciousness.     There  love  is  simply  all  in  all. 

Let  me  illustrate.  So  long  as  natural  science  in  its  theologi- 
cal enterprises  omitted  to  take  any  account  of  man  it  could  not 
hope  to  find  a  God  who  was  spiritual.  Inert  or  dead  matter, 
the  crudest  form  which  reality  could  take,  was  made  the  ulti- 
mate cause  and  origin  of  all  objects.  But  when  nature  was 
found  to  imply  a  human  or  spiritual  result  as  its  own  ultimate 
achievement,  then  it  had  to  be  newly  construed,  and  a  better 
idea  of  God,  or  of  the  first  cause,  than  dead  matter  had  to  be 


254  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

found.  Speculation  started  from  fresh  data.  Amongst  the 
premisses  from  which  religious  conclusions  were  drawn,  hence- 
forth, were  the  spiritual  capacities  and  experience  of  man- 
kind. 

To-day,  both  religion  and  experience  enrich  still  further  the 
data  of  the  philosopher.  Bj^  observation  of  that  experience  he 
discovers  for  the  first  time  the  function  of  love  in  uniting  God 
and  man.  Only  where  love  rules  does  the  unity  of  persons 
attain  fulness,  and  the  difference  of  "you  and  me"  disappear, 
so  that  the  humblest  devout  man  can  say  "I  and  the  Father 
are  one." 

But,  on  this  matter  of  the  power  and  place  of  love  in  man's 
religious  and  secular  life,  I  am  tempted  to  turn  to  the  poets, 
and  above  all  to  Browning,  who,  as  a  poet  of  love  in  all  its  sub- 
limer  forms,  stands  alone. 

In  endeavouring  to  estimate  the  value  of  his  teaching,  I  have 
asked  "What,  then,  is  the  principle  of  unity  between  the  divine 
and  the  human?  How  can  we  interpret  the  life  of  man  as 
God's  life  in  man,  so  that  man,  in  attaining  the  moral  ideal 
proper  to  his  own  nature,  is  at  the  same  time  fulfilling  ends 
which  may  justly  be  called  divine?" 

The  poet,  in  early  life  and  in  late  life  alike,  has  one  answer 
to  this  question — an  answer  given  with  the  confidence  of  com- 
plete conviction.  The  meeting-point  of  God  and  man  is  love. 
Love,  in  other  words,  is,  for  the  poet,  the  supreme  principle 
both  of  morality  and  religion.  Love,  once  for  all,  solves  that 
contradiction  between  them  which,  both  in  theory  and  in  prac- 
tice, has  embarrassed  the  world  for  so  many  ages.  Love  is 
the  sublimest  conception  attainable  by  man ;  a  life  inspired  by 
it  is  the  most  perfect  form  of  goodness  he  can  conceive;  there- 
fore, love  is,  at  the  same  moment,  man's  moral  ideal  and  the 
very  essence  of  Godhood.  A  life  actuated  by  love  is  divine, 
whatever  other  limitations  it  may  have.  Such  is  the  perfec- 
tion and  glory  of  this  emotion,  when  it  has  been  translated  into 
a  conscious  motive  and  become  the  energ\'  of  an  intelligent  will, 
that  it  lifts  him  who  owns  it  to  the  sublimest  height  of 
being. 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  255 

"For    the    loving   worm    within    its    clod, 
Were  diviner  than  a  loveless  god 
Amid  his  worlds,  I  will  dare  to  say."  ^ 

So  excellent  is  this  emotion  that,  if  man,  who  has  this  power  to 
love,  did  not  find  the  same  power  in  God,  then  man  would 
excel  him,  and  the  creature  and  Creator  change  parts. 

"Do  I  find  love  so  full  in  my  nature,  God's  ultimate  gift. 
That  I  doubt  his  own   love  can  compete  with   it?     Here,   the   parts 

shift? 
Here,  the  creatures  surpass  the  Creator, — the  end  what  Began?"" 

Not  SO,  says  David,  and  with  him  no  doubt  the  poet  himself. 
God  is  himself  the  source  and  fulness  of  love. 

" 'Tis  thou,  God,  that  givest,  'tis  I  who  receive: 
In  the  first  is  the  last,  in  thy  will  is  my  power  to  believe, 
All's  one  gift. 

Would  I  suffer  for  him  that  I  love?     So  wouldst  thou, — so  wilt  thou! 
So   shall   crown   thee,   the   topmost,    ineffablest,    uttermost   crown — 
And  thy  love  fill  infinitude  wholly,  nor  leave  up   nor  down 
One  spot  for  the  creature  to  stand   in!"" 

And  this  same  love  not  only  constitutes  the  nature  of  God  and 
the  moral  ideal  of  man,  but  it  is  also  the  purpose  and  essence 
of  all  created  being,  both  animate  and  inanimate. 

"This  world's  no  blot  for  us, 
Nor  blank;  it  means  intensely,  and  means  good."  ^ 

"O  world,  as  God  has  made  it!     All  is  beauty: 
And  knowing  this,  Is  love,  and  love  is  duty. 

What  further  may  be  sought  for  or  declared  ?"° 

In  this  world  then  "all's  love,  yet  all's  law."  God  permits 
nothing  to  break  through  its  universal  sway,  even  the  very 
wickedness  and  misery  of  life  are  brought  into  the  scheme  of 

i'*Christmas   Eve."  ='"Saul.''  ^Ibid. 

*"Fra  Lippo  Lippi."  «"The  Guardian   Angel." 


256  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

good,  and,  when  rightly  understood,  reveal  themselves  as  its 
means. 

"I  can  believe  this  dread  machinery 
Of  sin  and  sorrow,  would  confound  me  else, 
Devised, — all  pain,  at  most  expenditure 
Of  pain  by  Who  devised  pain, — to  evolve. 
By  new  machinery  in  counterpart. 
The  moral  qualities  of  man — how  else? — 
To  make  him  love  in  turn  and  be  beloved, 
Creative   and  self-sacrificing  too. 
And  thus  eventually  Godlike."  ^ 

The  poet  thus  brings  the  natural  world,  the  history  of  man, 
and  the  nature  of  God  within  the  limits  of  the  same  concep- 
tion. The  idea  of  love  solves  for  Browning  all  the  enigmas 
of  human  life  and  thought. 

"The    thing    that    seems 
Mere   misery,    under    human    schemes, 
Becomes,  regarded  by  the  light 
Of  love,  as  very  near,  or  quite 
As  good  a  gift  as  joy  before."  ° 

Love  thus  played  in  Browning's  philosophy  of  life  the  part 
that  Reason  filled  in  Hegel's  or  the  blind-will  in  Schopen- 
hauer's. He  reduces  everything  into  ways  in  which  this  prin- 
ciple acts.  And  it  widens  the  outlook  of  the  poet  beyond  the 
things  of  space  and  time  and  this  life.  Love  not  only  gave 
him  firm  footing  amidst  the  waste  and  welter  of  the  present 
world  where  "time  spins  fast,  life  fleets,  and  all  is  change"; 
but  it  made  him  look  forward  with  joy  to  the  immortal  course. 
The  facts  of  eternity,  no  less  than  those  of  time,  are  love- 
woven. 

So  far  as  I  can  see,  the  demand  of  philosophy,  placed  at  its 
highest,  is  thus  met  by  a  religion  whose  God  is  a  God  of 
Love. 

i"Thc  Ring  and  the  Book— The  Pope,"  1375-1383.  ="Easter  Day." 


LECTURE  XIX 

THE   IMMORTALITY   OF    THE   SOUL 

We  assume  that  reason  is  the  most  fundamental  principle  in 
our  theoretical  life.  If  there  is  not  rational  connection  between 
facts  and  if  the  relations  between  them  are  not  discoverable 
by  the  methods  of  reason,  then  the  whole  region  of  the  real 
would  be  for  us  chaotic.  We  could  draw  no  conclusion ;  no 
practical  maxim  would  be  reliable.  Man  would  be  helpless 
in  a  tumble-down  universe. 

Can  it  be  that  Love  on  the  practical  side  of  life  fulfils  a 
similar  function?  Neglecting  for  a  moment  the  fact  that 
spiritual  forces  imply  each  other  in  such  a  way  that  any  one  of 
them  may  be  conceived  as  containing  the  rest,  would  a  loveless 
world  be  more  possible  or  desirable  than  an  irrational  one? 

Assuming,  as  is  often  done,  that  "reason  is  cold" — either 
passionless  as  Hume  thought,  or  the  antagonist  of  all  passion 
and  desire  as  Kant  thought,  could  men  live  together  in  such  a 
loveless  relation?  That  is  to  say,  would  social  life  and  all  it 
brings  be  possible?  And  again,  would  religion  be  possible? 
Would  the  dedication  of  the  self  to  the  best,  and  the  worship 
and  service  of  it  take  place,  where  no  love  crowned  the  object 
with  worth? 

Both  answers  must  be  negative.  Love  is  no  less  a  condition 
of  right  or  rational  practice  than  Reason  is;  and  when  Hegel 
passed  from  the  former  to  the  latter  there  was  no  fundamental 
change  of  outlook. 

And,  of  course,  reason  includes  love  and  love  at  its  best  in- 
cludes reason.  To  act  in  the  most  rational  way  towards  our 
neighbour  is  certainly  to  behave  in  the  spirit  of  love.     Every 

267 


258  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

service  if  it  proceeds  from  Love  gains  thoroughness,  and  value, 
and  beauty.  There  are  few  if  any  circumstances  in  which  the 
loving  attitude  is  not  the  most  reasonable  and  practically 
effective. 

But  accentuate  their  affinity  as  we  may,  the  speculative  at- 
titude and  the  religious  remain  different.  They  are  rarely 
both  occupied  at  the  same  time.  The  temper  of  mind  which 
doubts  and  tests  and  reasons  for  and  against  a  doctrine  differs 
fundamentally  from  that  which  trusts,  adores,  loves  and 
worships. 

When  doubt  comes,  as  it  does  upon  all  reflective  minds,  there 
follows,  or  ought  to  follow,  an  appeal  to  reason.  And  if  the 
frank  use  of  the  methods  of  reason  support  the  faith  then  there 
is  great  peace. 

There  are  few  attitudes  of  the  spirit  more  worth  striving 
for  than  that  which  is  inspired  and  guided  by  a  religious  faith, 
that  is  itself,  in  turn,  supported  and  ratified  by  our  interpre- 
tation of  the  ultimate  meaning  of  the  finite  facts  of  the  world 
in  which  we  live. 

How  far  have  we  achieved  this  purpose? 

What  are  the  results  of  our  enquiry? 

At  first  sight  these  results  appear  to  be  pitifully  meagre, 
even  if  our  conclusions  follow  by  a  sound  process  from  sound 
premisses. 

In  the  first  place,  oil  our  conclusions  are  hypothetical,  and.  as 
we  have  seen,  to  treat  a  religious  faith  as  if  it  were  a  hypoth- 
esis repels  many  good  people,  philosophers  among  them. 

But  when  the  function  of  hypotheses  in  our  practical  and 
cognitive  life  Is  more  closely  considered  there  is  less  dissatis- 
faction. For  all  our  knowledge  is  found  to  be  hypothetical, 
being  incomplete;  and  we  cannot  reject  all  knowledge.  That 
were  a  self -stultifying  attitude,  as  absolute  scepticism  always  is. 

In  the  next  place,  let  me  remind  you,  our  hypotheses  are,  in 
every  department,  our  ultimate  explanatory  conceptions.  Only 
in  their  light  are  facts  intelligible.  Knowledge  does  not  ar- 
rive at  completeness  either  of  content  or  certainty.  "We  are 
made  to  grow."     It  satisfies,  however,  if  we  have  succeeded  in 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  259 

establishing  some  universal  hypothesis,  and  tracing  its  presence 
in  every  detailed  fact  that  comes  under  it. 

And  if  be  true  that  the  sanest  explanation  hitherto  offered  of 
the  facts  and  events  of  our  finite  life  is  that  which  refers  them 
ultimately  to  the  operation  of  the  Absolute  of  Philosophy  or  the 
God  of  Religion,  then  religious  faith  is  so  far  ratified.  No 
stronger  kind  of  proof  than  this  can  be  offered  in  any  science. 

If,  again,  the  practice  of  religion,  the  religious  life,  brings 
new  reasons  for  the  faith;  if  spiritual  facts,  in  other  words, 
prove  more  and  more  that  they  are  their  own  sufficient  justi- 
fication, then  the  sense  of  the  truth  of  religion  grows,  and  has 
a  right  to  grow.  Practice  brings  new  tests,  and  nothing  ex- 
plains the  nature  of  a  thing  or  its  value  so  fully  as  its  activi- 
ties. Pragmatism  is  quite  right  in  accentuating  test  and  trial; 
its  error  is  to  leave  out  the  intelligence  which  draws  the  con- 
clusions: and  religion  indubitably  sustains  the  pragmatic  tests. 

If  I  could  say  that  our  enquiry  had  resulted  in  placing  re- 
ligious faith  on  this  basis,  i.e.  on  the  same  basis  as  the  colligat- 
ing conceptions  which  the  scientific  man  calls  his  hypotheses,  I 
should  be  more  than  satisfied.  But  I  must  be  frank  and  con- 
fess that  I  have  achieved  nothing  so  convincing. 

You  may  remember  the  emphasis  that  was  thrown  upon  the 
difference  between  not-proven  and  disproved;  and  the  sharp 
distinction  we  drew  between  the  instances  in  which  a  law  of 
nature  or  a  hypothesis  had  not  as  yet  been  traced,  and  the  in- 
stances in  which  it  had  been  proved  to  fail,  being  directly 
contradicted  by  a  relevant  fact? 

In  the  latter  case  the  scientific  man  at  once  gives  up  his 
hypothesis,  and  fumbles  about  for  some  other :  for  until  he  finds 
one  he  is  helpless  amidst  a  chaotic  collection  of  enigmata. 

Now,  it  seems  to  me  that  the  central  hypothesis  of  a  philos- 
ophy of  religion,  the  vital  article  in  an  enlightened  religious 
creed,  is  thus  challenged  by  facts  which  we  have  all  observed 
and  which  are  not  reconcilable  with  it — except  on  one  condition. 

The  central  article  to  which  I  refer  is  the  faith  in  the  omnip- 
otence and  limitless  love  of  God — the  spiritual  perfection  of 
the  Absolute.     The  fact  which  contradicts  this  faith — a  fact 


260  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

which  an  honest  and  fearless  intelligence  will  not  try  to  deny — 
is  the  ultimate  failure  of  some  human  lives,  and,  therefore,  in 
these  instances,  of  God's  goodness  or  power.  We  follow  cer- 
tain lives  to  the  end  of  their  career,  and  at  the  side  of  the  grave 
we  turn  away  our  thoughts  from  the  contemplation  of  them, 
knowing  they  were  a  blunder  and  tragedy.  The  ethical  enter- 
prise which  human  life  is  supposed  to  be  had  come  to  what  is 
worse  than  nothing.  All  would  be  well  if,  like  some  writers, 
we  could  be  satisfied  with  a  God  who,  while  not  caring  for 
the  individual,  cared  for  the  species ;  or  with  a  general  triumph 
of  the  good.  The  conception  of  a  God  whose  goodness  or 
power,  or  both,  is  limited  might  also  satisfy.  But  we  have  re- 
jected these  facile  solutions  of  the  difficulties.  No  scientific 
spirit  could  be  satisfied  with  them.  On  the  contrary,  the 
scientific  man  would  affirm  that  one  genuine  failure  of  the  good, 
in  any  one  single  life,  deprives  us  of  the  right  to  be  convinced 
of  the  divine  perfection  which  we  deem  to  be  essential  to 
religion. 

The  sceptical  inference  is  undoubtedly  sound.  That  is  to 
say,  the  premisses  can  yield  no  other  conclusion  to  honest 
thought.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  premisses  from  which  the 
inference  proceeds  may  be  insecure,  unreliable,  incomplete,  or 
even  false.     Let  us  examine  them^ 

In  the  first  place,  our  knowledge  of  any  particular  object  is 
confessedly  incomplete;  and  this  is  especially  true  of  the  ex- 
ceedingly complex  object  we  call  man.  The  life  we  have 
condemned  as  a  failure  may  not  have  been  a  failure.  Our 
view  of  the  individual  may  have  been  wrong.  In  the  next 
place,  the  life-process  we  have  witnessed  and  from  which  we 
drew  our  conclusion  may  have  been  incomplete.  It  may  have 
been  stopped  in  mid-course.  We  have  no  more  right  to  assume 
that  death  ends  matters  than  to  assert  the  opposite.  We  do  not 
know  what  takes  place  at  death.  We  cannot  tell  whether  or 
not  death  is  more  than  a  temporary  sleep ;  and  we  can  draw  no 
conclusion,  either  sceptical  or  otherwise,  in  such  circumstances. 
Death  is  manifestly  a  part  of,  and  has  a  place  in,  the  scheme 
of  things.    As  such  it  is  capable  of  a  rational  explanation,  but 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  261 

that  explanation  has  not  been  found  as  yet.  There  is  nothing 
more  obscure  within  the  whole  psychological  region  than  the 
relation  of  the  soul  and  body,  and  the  dissolution  of  that  rela- 
tion. There  are  many  theories,  and  every  one  of  them  is  more 
or  less  probable.  For  instance,  it  would  appear  that  when  a 
physical  organism  achieves  a  certain  complexity  of  structure  it 
performs  the  activities  usually  attributed  to  spirit  or  soul.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  exact  opposite  may  seem  to  be  true,  namely, 
that  only  in  spirit  or  soul  does  the  body  acquire  any  meaning, 
and  only  in  virtue  of  that  "end"  does  it  exist  at  all.  Such  was 
Aristotle's  view.  "The  soul  was  the  first  perfect  realization  of 
a  natural  body  possessed  potentially  of  life."  ^  The  ordinary 
psychologist  restrains  himself,  and  propounds  no  theory  of  the 
relation  of  soul  and  body.  There  are  two  series  of  phenomena, 
he  tells  us,  which,  so  far  as  we  can  observe,  are  independent; 
and  yet  they  have  a  concurrence  that  suggests  intimate  connec- 
tion. I,  for  my  part,  have  affirmed  that  the  distinction  between 
soul  and  body,  or  nature  and  spirit,  by  no  means  amounts  to 
their  independence  of  each  other.  The  idea  of  an  unbroken 
evolution,  according  to  which  mind,  too,  is  a  natural  product, 
precludes  such  a  view.  Moreover,  the  impotence  and  meaning- 
lessness  of  both  man  and  his  world  when  held  apart,  suggests 
a  unity  within  their  difference. 

Amidst  such  a  variety  of  opinions  it  seems  to  be  impossible 
either  to  affirm  or  to  deny  the  immortality  of  the  soul  on  psycho- 
logical grounds.  The  future  may  reveal  that  which,  in  its  very 
nature,  necessarily  conquers  death ;  but  that  discovery  has  not 
been  made  as  yet. 

The  biologist  is  not  much  less  helpless  than  the  psychologist. 
To  all  appearance  the  death  of  an  animal  is  its  end.  It  has 
been  all  along,  as  an  individual  animal,  less  the  care  of  nature 
than  the  species  is;  and  even  the  species  may  disappear.  Is 
nature  careful  even  of  the  t}pe?  On  the  other  hand,  the 
biologist  affirms  the  unbroken  continuity  of  every  kind  of  life. 
The  life  that  is  in  the  oak  of  to-day — the  same  life — was  in  the 
first  oak  that  ever  grew  on  the  cooling  earth.    There  has  never 

•Edwin  Wallace's  Aristotle's  Psychology. 


262  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

been  a  single  break  or  gap,  or  need  of  the  recreative  act  which 
a  new  beginning  demands. 

Have  we  here  a  hint,  within  the  natural  region,  of  something 
that  masters  death?  Can  death  be  merely  a  recurrent  incident 
in  the  history  of  a  plant  or  animal  ?  That  it  has  a  place  of  its 
own  in  the  scheme  of  things  is  undeniable,  as  Hegel  said ;  and 
it  follows  that  it  has  significance  only  in  virtue  of  its  part  and 
function  within  that  scheme.  Death  contributes  somehow  to  its 
perfection.     How  ? 

There  is  another  natural  feature  which  seems  to  suggest  the 
same  positive  conclusion  as  to  immortality,  namely,  the  cul- 
minative  character  of  the  life-process.  The  history  of  spirit, 
whether  in  its  theoretical  or  practical  activities,  shows  this 
fact  quite  clearly.  The  past  does  not  vanish.  It  is  preserved. 
Knowledge,  experience,  character  grow,  and  growth  implies 
this  conversion  of  the  past  into  an  active  element  of  the  present. 
There  is  no  way  of  accounting  for  the  growth  of  human  civili- 
zation if  the  process  of  living  has  not  this  cumulative  character. 

Now,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  this  fact  would  become  practically 
meaningless  if  death  ended  all.  Death,  whenever  it  came, 
would  set  the  process  at  nought:  and  death  may  come  at  any 
moment.  Its  coming  is  the  only  certain  thing  in  man's  life ;  but 
the  when  and  how  of  its  coming  are  the  most  uncertain.  The 
"cumulative  process"  and  every  other  human  interest  gives  it 
no  pause.  It  takes  the  babe  from  its  mother  before  the  process 
has  begun;  or  the  mother  from  the  babe  who  is  left  without 
her  care.  The  strong  man  is  called,  the  feeble  is  left:  the 
man  of  wide  uses,  and  social  sympathies  and  services,  is  sum- 
moned, his  useless  neighbour  is  left  to  cumber  the  ground  till 
old  age  brings  its  imbecilities.  Can  such  an  apparently  lawless 
event  as  death  have  the  importance  that  would  accrue  to  that 
w^hich  puts  a  final  end  to  the  soul's  enterprise?  It  seems  to 
me  to  be  much  more  natural  to  conclude  that  death  is,  in  truth, 
a  very  insignificant  event,  seeing  that  its  "when"  and  "how"  of 
coming  count  for  so  little. 

The  fact  is  that  nature  does  not  destroy  and  demolish.  It 
changes.     The  probability  is  strong  that  nothing  is  ever  finally 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  263 

lost.  Physics  will  not  admit  the  abolition  of  any  form  of 
energy:  its  task  consists  of  watching  its  transmutations.  But 
what  waste  would  compare  with  that  which  death  would  bring, 
were  death  equivalent  to  extinction!  The  whole  purpose  of 
man's  life,  as  we  have  described  it,  would  be  set  at  nought  and 
spiritual  ends  placed  at  the  mercy  of  the  most  incalculable  of 
natural  events.  Is  it  not  far  more  likely  that  death  is  a  pause 
than  a  break — at  least  in  the  case  of  man?  For  man's  case  is 
not  like  that  of  any  other  animal :  he  is  self-conscious,  and  self- 
consciousness  brings  rights.  Man  has  a  right  to  the  conditions 
which  make  for  his  well-being,  if,  indeed,  the  rule  of  the  world 
is  in  God's  hands;  and  extinction  at  death  would  sometimes 
violate,  and  at  other  times  greatly  limit  that  right.  Man's 
self-consciousness,  and  his  claim  to  the  conditions  of  moral 
well-being,  have  a  final  claim,  which  cannot  be  over-ridden  by 
death. 

Before  I  return  to  the  main  issue  I  may  mention  that  the  con- 
tinued existence  of  man  after  death  has  been  held  to  imply  his 
existence  previous  to  the  present  life.  This  does  not  seem  to 
me  to  follow.  Until  we  arrive  at  the  conception  of  a  self- 
conscious  being,  we  do  not  discover  that  whose  worth  lies  in 
itself,  and  which  has  intrinsic  rights.  Other  beings  may  be 
used  as  means  to  something  other  than  themselves;  but  a  self- 
conscious  being  is  never  reducible  to  such  a  condition.  Now 
self-consciousness,  we  concluded,  was  the  result  of  a  long  evo- 
lutionary process,  and  so,  likewise,  are  the  rights  and  claims 
which  self-consciousness  brings  with  it.  Amongst  these  is  the 
right  to  immortality.  For  being  in  himself  an  end,  the  scheme 
of  things  must  continue  to  serve  him,  and  not  overwhelm  or 
destroy  him.  He  must  not  be  at  the  mercy  of  death,  or  of 
any  other  external  power. 

Notwithstanding  these  considerations,  all  of  which  point  in 
the  same  direction,  I  am  not  prepared  to  maintain  that  the  ob- 
servation of  man's  present  life  in  this  world  furnishes  adequate 
premisses  for  either  the  affirmation  or  the  denial  of  man's  im- 
mortality. Not  that  the  balance  between  the  t^vo  possibilities 
is  even.     For  there  are  no  premisses  at  all  from  which  denial 


264  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

can  justly  issue.  There  cannot  be  any  negative  evidence :  there 
is  only  silence.  On  the  other  hand,  the  extension  of  life  beyond 
natural  death  seems  congruous  with  the  natural  scheme,  in- 
stead of  being,  like  extinction,  sheer  waste  of  achieved  results. 
When  we  know  more  of  the  nature  of  the  soul,  or  spirit,  or 
mind,  and  of  their  relation  to  the  body,  we  may  discover 
grounds  in  present  facts  for  a  more  confident  conclusion.  At 
present  we  must  look  in  another  direction  than  that  of  the 
merely  natural  scheme. 

I  need  hardly  say  that  I  am  not  inviting  you  to  consider  the 
evidence  which  Spiritualists  offer.  Perceptual  knowledge  of 
those  who  have  passed  away  in  death  is  not  given  to  us,  nor,  I 
believe,  is  it  capable  of  being  acquired.  My  faith  in  Spiritual- 
ism, in  all  its  forms,  is  too  weak  to  permit  me  even  to  examine 
them.  With  your  permission,  I  will  fling  Spiritualism,  so  far 
as  these  lectures  are  concerned,  upon  my  rubbish-heap. 

The  grounds  to  which  I  refer  as  possibly  offering  premisses 
for  reliable  conclusions  are  all  moral,  or  spiritual — if  you  like, 
you  may  call  them  religious.  They  are  furnished  by  man's 
nature,  though  by  no  means  necessarily  by  his  desires.  Royce 
finds  within  our  finite  personalities  an  insatiable  divine  discon- 
tent which  calls  for  and  implies  satisfaction.  Surely  mere  dis- 
content can  constitute  no  claim.  It  must  be  some  positive  ele- 
ment that  can  imply  the  satisfaction.  I  do  not  think  that 
the  Universe  exists  in  order  to  make  man  contented.  For  that 
purpose  all  that  is  necessary  would  be  to  extinguish  his  ideals, 
and  turn  him  back  into  a  ruminant.  Man's  rights  spring  neither 
from  his  discontent  nor  from  his  desires.  They  arise  from  his 
intrinsic  nature,  the  final  purpose  of  his  life  and  of  his  world 
— namely,  moral  progress.  That  is  the  conception  which  we 
have  throughout  made  our  standard  of  values  and  the  source 
of  rights.  And  here  we  come  upon  the  crowning  use  of  it.  It 
means  that  man  is  immortal  //  immortality  is  a  condition  of  the 
fulfilment  of  the  purpose  of  God,  as  expressed  in  man's  moral 
life  and  the  world-process. 

The  ground  of  immortality  does  not  lie  in  our  desires.  I 
do  not  think  that  our  desires  are  consulted.     "What  appeals  to 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  265 

me,"  says  Mr.  Bradley,  ".  .  .is  the  demand  of  personal  affec- 
tion, the  wish  that,  where  a  few  creatures  love  one  another, 
nothing  whether  before  or  after  death  should  be  changed.  But 
how  can  I  insist  that  such  a  demand  (whatever  one  may  dare 
to  fondly  hope  or  dream)  is  endorsed  by  religion?"*  I  do  not 
think  that  religion  does  endorse  it.  Not  that  it  is  a  small  mat- 
ter to  disappoint  the  yearnings  of  love;  but  that  love  itself,  if 
it  be  not  love  of  God,  is  not  the  spring  from  which  necessities 
flow. 

I  do  not  think  that  natural  affection,  desire,  or  friendship 
count,  except  as  elements  in  a  moral  system.  Religion  does 
demand  the  fulfilment  of  the  conditions  of  a  good  life;  and  I 
am  inclined  to  think  that  the  immortality  of  the  soul  is  one 
of  these  conditions.  Otherwise,  as  Mr.  Bradley  says,  "mere 
personal  survival  and  continuance  has  in  itself  nothing  to  do 
with  true  religion.  A  man  can  be  as  irreligious  (for  anything 
at  least  that  I  know)  in  a  hundred  lives  as  in  one." ' 

But  the  continuance  of  life,  or  rather  its  repetition,  gains 
importance  in  that  the  hundred  lives  offer  a  hundred  opportuni- 
ties of  learning  to  adopt  the  good  as  the  law  of  conduct.  Im- 
mortality extends  man's  spiritual  chances,  as  I  understand  them. 
Some  time,  some  where,  in  some  life,  under  some  new  circum- 
stances and  conditions,  the  soul,  one  would  say,  will  awake  and 
apprehend  its  true  nature  and  destiny.  For  my  assumption  is, 
that  the  intercourse  between  man  and  his  world  will  have  a 
character  on  the  other  side  of  death  similar  to  that  which  it 
has  on  this  side.  Such  seems  to  be  the  demand  of  a  moral 
universe. 

There  is  an  ethical  sense  in  which  the  immortality  of  the 
soul  loses  all  importance.  The  possibility  of  endless  existence 
ought  in  no  wise  to  affect  our  personal  conduct  in  the  present. 
It  does  not  enhance  the  obligatoriness  of  duty  if  there  is  life 
beyond  life  in  an  endless  series,  nor  loosen  it  if,  when  death 
comes,  we  cease  to  exist.  Morality  does  not  depend  upon  the 
immortality  of  the  soul :  but  religion  does. 

I  do  not  deny  that  many  truly  religious  men  doubt  or  even 

^Truth  and  Reality,  p.  439.  ^Ibid.  440. 


266  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

deny  the  immortality  of  the  soul.  The  problem  of  immortality 
stands  apart  from  those  of  religious  faith.  But  this  result 
comes  from  the  incoherence  of  such  religious  experiences.  They 
have  not  been  carefully  scrutinized.  Otherwise  it  would  be 
evident  that  the  belief  in  a  God  whose  goodness  and  power  are 
unlimited,  which  we  have  deemed  to  be  essential  to  religion,  is 
not  possible  unless  the  soul  be  immortal.  A  single  life  given 
to  man  would  not  exhaust  the  resources  of  infinite  goodness. 
There  must  be  "life  after  life,  in  endless  series." 

"Everything  finite,"  says  Mr.  Bradley,  "is  subject  in  princi- 
ple to  chance  and  change  and  to  dissolution  of  its  self.  But 
from  this  it  does  not  follow  that  finite  beings  are  unable  to  en- 
dure, as  themselves,  for  an  indefinite  time.  And  in  the  end  the 
argument  that  we  are  finished  when  our  bodies  have  decayed, 
seems  to  possess  but  a  small  degree  of  logical  evidence."  * 
Many  thinkers  would  say  that  it  possesses  none;  and  that  it  is 
none  the  worse  for  the  absence  of  logical  evidence.  Their  be- 
lief in  immortality  does  not  rest  on  logic,  they  tell  us.  The 
future  life  is  a  matter  of  faith.  The  first  thing,  for  instance, 
that  impresses  the  student  of  Tennyson  and  Browning  is  the 
fulness  of  their  belief  in  the  immortality  of  the  soul.  If  they 
ever  did  doubt  its  truth — which  is  very  questionable — doubt 
only  "shook  the  torpor  of  assurance  from  their  creed":  it  left 
the  belief  itself  more  strong  and  fixed.  Tennyson's  view  re- 
garding the  state  of  the  soul  after  death  changed  at  different 
times.  Browning  emphatically  set  aside  both  the  final  woe  and 
the  final  extinction  of  the  wicked.  Neither  could  Tennyson 
adopt  the  belief  that  any  soul  would  in  the  end  be  excluded 
from  the  love  of  God.  But  their  faith  in  a  future  life  never 
wavered  or  weakened,  nor  did  their  conviction  that  it  was  in 
spite  of  reason,  rather  than  by  favour  of  reason,  that  it  could 
be  held. 

Let  us  examine  these  attitudes.  Finite  beings,  thinks  Mr. 
Bradley,  may  be  able  to  endure,  as  themselves,  for  an  indefi- 
nite time.  But  is  man  adequately  described  as  a  "finite"  being? 
Have  we  not  found  that  self-consciousness  implies  what  is  more 

^Trttth  and  Reality,  p.  467. 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  267 

than  finite?  Does  it  not  signify  what  is  self-determined,  and 
what,  therefore,  is  not  at  the  mercy  of  anything  save  itself? 
Mr.  Bradley  ought  not  to  debate  this  question  on  finite  grounds. 

I  need  not  say  that  he  shows  no  tendency  to  rely  on  any- 
thing except  logical  evidence;  and  the  logical  evidence  against 
immortality  he  finds  to  be  very  weak.  In  this  respect  he  is  at 
the  opposite  pole  from  the  poets.  They  believe  that  logical 
evidence  goes  for  nothing.* 

So  it  does,  if  what  is  meant  is  the  conscious  use  of  logical 
methods.  But  supposing  that  reasoning  is  such  as  we  have  de- 
scribed— the  bringing  to  bear  of  the  experience  of  the  past  upon 
the  facts  of  the  present?  If  our  view  is  valid  their  faith  had 
its  premisses:  these  premisses  were  the  results  of  intellectual 
and  more  or  less  correct  judgments:  and  judgments  are,  one 
and  all,  the  results  of  a  logical  process.  The  poets  had  dis- 
covered that  the  grounds  of  their  faith  were  hypothetical;  but 
they  had  not  discovered,  nor  even  asked,  what  are  the  nature 
and  significance  of  hypotheses.  They  were  not  aware  that 
our  hypotheses  are,  in  the  last  resort,  not  merely  the  founda- 
tions of  our  knowledge,  but  "the  light  of  all  our  seeing." 

It  is  not  usually  realized  that  the  final  proof  of  any  fact  is 
negative  in  character.  An  object  is  proved  real,  an  idea  is 
proved  true,  when  the  denial  of  it  brings  consequences  which 
are  recognized  as  too  insane  to  be  entertained.  Argument  at 
that  juncture  closes;  the  critic  is  silenced. 

I  admit  that  the  test  is  not  perfect  or  complete,  for,  after  all, 
it  is  employed  by  a  fallible  intelligence.  But  all  the  same  it 
is  the  final  test,  and  remains  final,  whether  used  or  mis-used 
by  the  individual. 

The  question  we  have  thus  to  ask  is:  "Does  the  denial  of 
the  immortality  of  the  soul  imply  such  an  insane  consequence?" 
We  have  already  answered  it.  It  is  not  possible  to  maintain 
the  limitless  love  and  power  of  God  if  the  soul  be  not  immor- 
tal. There  are  men,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  who  die  in  their 
sins.  If  death  ends  all,  then  their  lives  can  be  called  nothing 
but  failures.     These  persons  have  missed  what  is  best;  they 

*See  the  writer's  Immortality  of  the  Soul  in  Tennyson  and  Browning, 


268  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

have  not  used  the  opportunities  of  life  to  build  up  a  good  char- 
acter. The  failure  of  their  lives  is,  so  far  as  they  are  con- 
cerned, the  failure  of  God's  purpose.  It  was  not  benevolent, 
or  it  was  not  strong  enough,  to  secure  their  well-being.  The 
imperfection  of  God  implies  a  breach  of  purpose,  and  there- 
fore, of  order,  somewhere  in  his  Universe,  Sheer  unreason  has 
found  an  entry.  It  is  not  possible  any  longer  to  set  out  from  the 
hypothesis  on  which  exerything  depended  for  us — namely,  that 
the  world-process,  of  which  man  is  a  part,  is  ethical  in  character, 
and  the  expression  of  the  sovereign  will  of  a  perfect  Being. 

And  what  of  those  individuals  who  have  not  missed  the  pur- 
pose of  their  present  life — but,  as  we  would  hold,  have  all 
their  lives  morally  "attained"  ?  Is  the  result  of  their  strivings, 
failures  and  successes  to  go  for  nothing  when  death  comes?  To 
affirm  this,  it  seems  to  me,  is  impossible  except  to  those  who 
have  not  learnt  to  value  spiritual  achievement. 

What  remains  for  him  who  thus  gives  up  the  ethical  char- 
acter and  the  universal  ideal  of  the  cosmos?  We  have  only 
to  ask  the  question  to  perceive  that  he  who  gives  these  things 
up,  gives  up  the  conditions  under  which  his  rational  faculties 
can  be  of  use.  And  the  answer  of  the  believer  to  the  unbe- 
liever is  overwhelming:  denial  of  the  immortality  of  the  soul 
implies  absolute  Scepticism. 

No  stronger  proof  of  immortality  is  either  possible  or  neces- 
sary than  that  which  shows  that  it  is  a  necessary  condition  of 
an  orderly  universe.  The  two  hypotheses  support  each  other. 
The  truth  of  each  of  them,  taken  by  itself,  is  probable :  its  truth 
by  relation  to  its  complement  is  irrefragable. 

God  is.  God  is  perfect.  His  lovingkindness  and  power  are 
unlimited ;  and  his  greatest  gift  to  man  is  the  gift  of  the  power, 
tendency  and  opportunity  to  learn  goodness.  God's  goodness 
being  unlimited,  the  opportunity  not  made  use  of  by  man  in 
the  present  life  is  renewed  for  him  in  another  life,  and  in  still 
another;  till,  at  last,  his  spirit  finds  rest  in  the  service  of  the 
God  of  Love.  For  my  part,  I  wish  for  no  stronger  proof  of 
the  permanence  of  the  spiritual  process,  and  I  ought  not  to 
care  for  aught  beside:  that  supreme  good  involves  every  good. 


LECTURE  XX 

THE  RESULTS  OF  OUR  ENQUIRY 

I  HAVE  come  to  the  conclusion  that  we  cannot  close  this  series 
of  lectures  in  a  better  way  than  by  surveying  the  results  of  our 
enquiry.  There  are  features  I  should  like  to  accentuate,  as 
possibly  the  most  worthy  of  being  considered  further  by  you. 
Firstj  things  were  said  which,  if  not  new,  are  certainly  not 
familiar;  second,  there  are  others  whose  truth  is  doubtful,  and 
a  matter  of  controversy;  and  lastly,  there  are  truths  which  I 
consider  to  be  fundamental  to  a  rational  religious  faith. 

You  have  probably  observed  that  the  course  falls  into  three 
parts.  In  the  first  part  we  dealt  with  the  obstacles  in  the 
way  of  enquiry  into  the  validity  of  our  religious  creeds  by  the 
frank,  and  severe,  and  free  methods  of  science.  In  the  second 
part  I  expressed,  as  unsparingly  as  I  could,  the  antagonism 
between  the  religious  and  the  secular  life.  I  considered  care- 
fully the  apparently  irreconcilable  opposition  of  morality  and 
religion,  pointed  out  the  erroneous  conceptions  from  which  the 
contradiction  arose,  and,  finally,  indicated  the  principle  and 
method  by  which  alone  that  contradiction  could  be  solved.  In 
the  last  part  we  were  engaged  with  the  conception  of  the  God 
of  Religion  and  his  relation  to  the  finite  world,  and  especially 
to  man;  and  we  identified  him  with  the  Absolute  of  Philoso- 
phy. The  result  seemed  to  be  to  prove  that  reason  comes  to 
the  support  of  the  religion  which  is  enlightened.  Enquiry,  if 
free  and  thorough,  will  demonstrate  the  validity  of  our  reli- 
gious faith. 

Such,  expressed  in  general  terms,  were  our  themes.  Our 
question  now  is,  what  did  we  make  of  these  themes?    What  are 

269 


270  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

the  conclusions,  negative  or  positive,  as  to  the  value  and  validity 
of  our  religious  faith,  which  we  are  entitled  to  regard  as  deci- 
sive, and  ought  to  carry  away  with  us? 

I  must  in  the  first  place  of  all  make  a  confession.  Not 
merely  are  our  conclusions  somewhat  meagre,  but  they  are 
unsatisfactory  in  a  far  more  serious  sense.  They  are  based,  from 
beginning  to  end,  upon  an  assumption  which  I  have  made  no  at- 
tempt to  justify,  and  which,  if  false,  deprives  our  attempt  of  all 
value.  The  assumption  is  that  the  moral  life  has  a  value  which 
is  final,  unlimited  and  absolute.  By  the  moral  life  I  mean  the 
process  of  forming  a  good  character ;  by  good  character  I  mean 
a  way  of  living  which,  in  all  its  details,  is  dedicated  to  the 
service  of  the  best,  and  is  therefore  the  fulfilment,  at  one  and  the 
same  time,  of  the  moral  law  and  of  the  will  of  God.  From  the 
absoluteness  and  finality  of  the  value  of  the  process  of  learning 
goodness  it  follows,  that  everything  which  furthers  that  process 
is  good  in  the  most  unqualified  sense,  and  that  everything  which 
hinders  it  is  evil.  Moral  progress  is  our  principle  of  evalua- 
tion and  our  only  authoritative  measuring  rod.  We  approve 
and  we  condemn  by  reference  to  it,  and  to  it  only. 

Now,  if  the  moral  process,  the  practical  life  that  is  spent  in 
achieving  spiritual  excellence,  has  this  unconditioned  worth,  and 
is  the  best,  then  the  world  which  provides  room  for  that  process 
is  itself  the  best  world.  It  is  better  than  the  so-called  perfect 
world,  or  world  in  which  the  ideal  and  real  are  supposed  to 
coincide — a  world  which  is  perfect  in  the  static  sense.  In  such 
a  world  nothing  could  be  done  without  committing  evil,  and 
doing  harm ;  the  voice  of  duty  could  not  be  heard  because  what 
"ought  to  be"  already  "is";  there  could  be  neither  the  need 
nor  the  possibility  of  choosing  between  right  and  wrong.  It 
would  not  be  a  moral  world  at  all.  It  could  not  furnish  man 
with  the  conditions  of  the  moral  or  spiritual  enterprise,  and 
the  moral  life  would  not  be  possible.  But  no  one  would  dream 
of  calling  the  present  world  as  it  is  to-day  "perfect"  in  this 
the  usual,  static  sense  of  that  term;  nor  can  anyone  doubt  for 
a  moment  that  it  furnishes  the  most  ample  opportunities  for  the 
exercise  of  the  will  to  virtue.    The  calls  of  duty  are  loud  and 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  271 

constant,  for  him  that  hath  ears  to  hear.  Our  view  then  is  that 
the  moral  life  is  the  best  thing  conceivable,  and  that  this  present 
v^^orld,  owing  in  a  way  to  its  imperfections,  furnishes  the  oppor- 
tunity for  the  moral  process  and  demands  it  as  the  ultimate 
good.  But  we  have  not  proved  these  truths.  They  are  assump- 
tions, and  their  truth  may  be  doubted  and  denied.  Indeed, 
judging  by  our  ordinary  conduct,  many  of  us  do  deny  the  abso- 
lute value  of  the  moral  process.  We  are  always  prone  to  post- 
pone spiritual  considerations,  and  to  seek  first  the  things  that 
perish. 

Men  have  consciously  and  consistently  made  use  of  other 
standards  of  value,  both  in  their  judgments  and  in  their  way 
of  life.  The  Hedonists  are  a  conspicuous  example.  In  no  wise 
could  they  justify  a  world,  however  virtuous,  in  which  there 
was  more  pain  than  pleasure.  And,  as  a  rule,  it  is  very  diffi- 
cult to  convince  men  who  deny  the  sovereignty  of  ethical  con- 
ceptions, that  they  are  in  error.  We  may  urge,  for  instance,  that 
the  value  of  moral  facts  lies  wholly  in  themselves,  and  is  as  little 
dependent  on,  as  it  is  derivative  from,  aught  else.  But  they 
will  say  the  same  thing  of  pleasure — especially  if  you  permit 
them  to  call  it  "happiness."  "Assure  me  happiness  all  my  life 
long,  and  assure  the  same  to  all  those  whom  I  love,  and  I  shall 
ask  no  more.  I  shall  then  say  what  Faust  said  when  at  last 
Mephistopheles  claimed  his  soul,  'It  is  enough.  Let  the  moment 
stay.'  " 

Now,  I  do  not  admit  that  the  Hedonistic  position  is  unassail- 
able; but  I  should  like  to  expose  and  emphasise  the  difficulty 
of  raising  the  secular  spirit  to  a  level  from  which  it  will  judge 
things  spiritually.  The  consistent  use  of  spiritual  criteria  is 
not  easy  to  any  one  in  the  present  world;  and  to  the  secular- 
minded  man  the  argument  will  to  the  end  seem  to  rest  on 
sheer  assumption,  and  our  results  will  appear  to  be  just  the 
innocuous  fancies  of  unpractical  philosophers.  It  is  probable 
that  nothing  short  of  the  actual  experience  of  living  the  re- 
ligious life  will  suffice  to  justify  our  assumption,  and  to  qualify 
the  critic  to  pass  judgment. 

In  any  case,  without  that  assumption  we  are  quite  helpless: 


272  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

while,  granted  that  assumption,  many  more  important  conse- 
quences are  found  to  follow.  These  consequences  I  shall  now 
try  to  bring  into  the  foreground. 

The  first  consequence  which  follows  from  our  assumption 
is  that  it  provides  the  means  of  reconciling  religion  and  moral- 
ity. The  moral  life,  as  the  best  life  conceivable,  becomes  on 
this  view  the  process  of  realizing,  in  the  circumstances  and 
amongst  the  calls  of  ordinary  life,  the  good  which  is  absolute, 
and  thereby  of  fulfilling,  in  utter  devotion,  the  will  of  God. 
Morality  becomes  religion  in  practice;  and  right  conduct  can 
be  defined  as  doing  the  will  of  God.  Morality  and  religion 
are  found  to  be  complementary  and  inseparable  aspects  of  the 
good  life.  The  former  is  inspired,  guided  and  controlled  by 
the  latter,  and  the  latter  achieves  reality  in  its  moral  incar- 
nation. 

The  second  consequence  which  follows  is  that,  on  this  view, 
the  moral  life  instead  of  never  attaining  is  attaining  in  every 
virtuous  act.  The  process  of  forming  character  through  our 
volitional  efforts  is  seen  to  be  as  positive  and  genuine  an  ad- 
vance from  stage  to  stage  as  the  cognitive  process;  for  by  doing 
what  is  right  we  learn  how  to  do  better.  And  that  is  the  only 
way  of  learning  that  best  and  highest  of  tasks.  The  moral 
world  instead  of  presenting  a  scene  of  "hazards  and  hard- 
ships" and  failures,  instead  of  being  radically  such  a  blunder 
that  its  success  in  identifying  the  real  and  the  ideal  would  be 
its  own  extinction,  shows  us  a  constant  conversion  of  the  past 
life  into  a  stepping-stone.  For  man  rises  a  better  man  from 
doing  a  fine  action,  and  a  worse  from  doing  a  mean  one.  More- 
over, every  good  act  is,  in  its  way,  perfect.  If  the  whole  law 
is  not  directly  realized  in  it,  the  law  as  applicable  to  the  actual 
circumstances  is  put  in  practice.  In  the  circumstances  neither 
man  nor  God  could  do  better;  and  the  performance  of  duty  is 
just  the  highest  use  of  circumstance. 

I  cannot,  for  my  part,  regard  these  results  as  of  small  sig- 
nificance. The  antagonism  betu^een  morality  and  religion, 
the  view  of  the  former  as  merely  human  and  therefore  of  low 
value,  and  of  the  latter  as  something  aloof  from  the  secular 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  273 

life,  and  therefore  in  the  last  resort  a  matter  of  mysterious  and 
incommunicable  experience,  weakened  the  power  for  good  of 
both  of  them.  Nor  can  I  consider  that  the  consistent  and  per- 
sistent presentation  of  the  moral  life  as  a  tragic  matter,  a  failure 
in  that  which  is  best  of  all,  instead  of  a  joyous  process  of  learn- 
ing more  thoroughly  what  is  right,  could  have  been  without  its 
deterrent  effects.  We  cannot,  of  course,  advocate  the  pursuit  of 
moral  good  on  the  ground  of  the  prosperity  it  brings :  that  were 
to  reduce  morality,  the  supreme  good  and  "highest  end"  (as 
Aristotle  taught  us),  into  means.  Nevertheless,  we  can  hinder 
the  moral  progress  of  no  one  by  indicating  in  what  a  fair  coun- 
try the  man  who  is  learning  goodness  is  travelling.  Here  is 
the  true  primrose  path;  and  as  I  have  already  hinted,  the  pil- 
grims who  go  along  this  way  go  singing.  They  are  in  the  com- 
pany of  "The  Shining  One":  their  moral  life  is  a  divine 
service. 

In  the  next  place,  the  assumption  of  the  sovereign  worth  of 
the  process  of  learning  to  know  and  to  do  the  will  of  God,  and 
of  the  present  world  as  existing  in  order  to  furnish  the  oppor- 
tunities for  that  process,  throws  a  new  light  on  the  problem 
of  evil. 

Our  line  of  argument  on  this  matter  was  both  short  and 
simple.  If  the  spiritual  process  of  learning  to  recognize  and 
realize  the  best  has  the  supreme  value  which  we  attribute  to  it, 
then  the  world  that  makes  that  process  possible  is  the  best 
world.  It  is  a  better  world,  be  it  noted,  than  the  so-called 
"perfect  world"  of  ordinary  opinion.  That  so-called  perfect 
world  obviously  stands  in  no  need  of  improvement,  and  has 
no  room  nor  call  for  change.  There  is  nothing  in  it  that 
"Ought"  to  be  done;  there  are  no  unrealized  ideals:  on  the 
contrary,  to  do  anything  were  to  introduce  change,  and  a 
change  for  the  worse;  for  the  real  and  the  ideal  already  coin- 
cide. Morality  is  not  possible.  No  duty  calls.  Spiritual  en- 
terprise is  extinguished.  If  we  choose  the  good  (as  we  would), 
we  should  find  that  it  is  already  there,  accomplished ;  so  that 
we  can  but  stand  with  idle  and  empty  hands.  It  is  never  a 
moral  good. 


274  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

But  a  world  in  which  the  moral  life  is  not  possible,  a  world 
in  which  no  lover  of  what  is  right  can  move  hand  or  foot,  a 
world  that  is  static,  as  if  struck  by  a  magician's  wand,  were,  I 
should  say,  a  most  undesirable  world.  Man's  spirit  wants  to 
be  up  and  doing,  and  if  it  is  a  dedicated  spirit  it  wants  to  be 
up  and  doing  for  the  God  it  loves.  Nothing  conceivable  could 
be  more  stale  than  existence  in  a  perfect  world.  It  manifestly 
cannot  compare  in  spiritual  worth  to  a  world  where  the  cry 
for  help  arises  from  the  social  environment,  and  where  obedi- 
ence to  the  voice  of  duty,  and  the  giving  of  that  help,  are 
recognized  as  the  fulfilment  of  the  will  of  a  loving  God. 

I  in  no  wise  seek  to  justify  evil.  I  cannot  maintain  that  in 
itself  it  is  a  form  of  the  good:  under  no  circumstances  can  it 
be  changed  into  good.  But  I  leave  room  for  it;  for  I  recog- 
nize that  in  this  instance  the  striving  for  the  aim  is  the  attain- 
ment of  it,  the  battle  is  the  victory.  The  process  of  learn- 
ing to  do  what  is  right  is  the  spiritual  excellence  we  are 
seeking. 

The  third  result  that  accrues  from  the  assumption  which  we 
are  making  is  the  conception  of  the  indwelling  of  infinite  per- 
fection in  finite  objects — the  immanence  of  God  in  man's  nature 
and  his  participation  in  his  moral  strivings.  Man's  blind  and 
pathetic  gropings  after  the  best  become,  from  this  point  of  view, 
the  working  within  him  of  the  divine  will.  Nothing  can  be 
more  divine  than  the  process  of  acquiring  spiritual  excellence. 
It  is  a  movement  to  new  perfections,  each  realization  of  the 
best  being  the  starting  point  for  a  new  departure.  Instead  of 
a  Divine  Being  who  dwells  aloof  from  the  world-process  and 
can  only  look  on  at  it,  seeing  that  it  is  already  statically  per- 
fect, God  reveals  himself  in  that  process.  He  is  the  process 
from  stage  to  stage,  that  is,  from  perfection  to  perfection. 

God's  working  in  the  human  soul  may  often  seem  to  be  most 
imperfect  and  obscure:  for  man,  being  the  medium  of  the  opera- 
tions, limits  both  their  range  and  their  power.  The  human 
agent  must  adopt  the  will  of  God  as  his  rule  of  behaviour,  and 
the  range  of  man's  choice  is  small.  The  divine  working  can- 
not pass  beyond  the  boundaries  of  man's  free  choice:  for  what 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  276 

is  a  command  on  the  one  side  is  on  the  other  a  conscious  obliga- 
tion and  devoted  choice. 

No  doubt  this  view  brings  difficulties.  How  can  an  action, 
it  will  be  asked,  be  at  once  the  working  of  the  divine  will  in 
man  and  the  expression  of  man's  free  choice?  The  fact  seems 
undeniable,  at  least  to  the  religious  spirit :  man's  attempt  to  live 
the  good  life  is  unhesitatingly  pronounced  by  it  to  be  the  con- 
sequence of  its  dedication  of  itself  to  the  divine  service  in 
such  a  way  that  it  has  no  wish,  or  desire,  or  aim  which  is  ex- 
clusively its  own.  The  religious  man,  I  repeat,  gives  up  his 
very  self. 

We  met  this  difficulty  by  refusing  to  apply  exclusive  cate- 
gories.   Spiritual  beings,  we  affirmed,  include  one  another. 

The  attitude  of  spirit  is,  in  the  last  resort,  not  exclusive  to 
any  object.  All  things  are  possible  contents  of  its  knowledge 
and  instruments  of  its  purposes.  The  world  is  there  waiting 
for  man,  by  means  of  his  rational  powers,  to  enter  into  posses- 
sion of  it.  And  we  cannot  make  it  too  decisively  clear  to  our- 
selves that  the  parts  or  elements  in  the  world — the  facts,  in 
short — the  possession  of  which  signifies  most,  are  those  which 
have  already  become  the  expressions  of,  and  are  embodied  in, 
human  character.  "The  world  of  man"  is  for  every  man  the 
object  best  worth  knowing,  and  the  powers  asleep  in  that  world 
are  those  best  worth  awakening. 

Individuals,  we  have  said,  are  never  primarily  or  ultimately 
exclusive,  though  they  have  their  exclusive,  or  inner,  aspect. 
They  are  infinite  by  nature  and  therefore  all-comprehensive, 
although  hindered  and  limited  by  littleness  of  their  medium.  It 
were,  indeed,  a  tragic  world  were  the  relations  of  men  to  one 
another  exclusive  and  negative.  Who  wants  a  hearth  where 
the  child  cannot  say  ''My  father"  and  the  father  reply  with 
"My  child";  or  a  country  whose  citizens  do  not  feel  that  it  is 
their  own,  and  also  that  they  belong  to  it?  Our  domestic, 
social,  nay  I  shall  add,  our  human  life  is  one  unbroken  illus- 
tration of  the  mutual  interpenetration  of  rational  beings.  The 
see-saw  category  of  "either-or,"  which  has  hitherto  been  in 
use  in  social  questions,  has  brought  endless  difficulties.     It  is 


276  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

time  that  we  should  try  the  concrete  view,  and  start  from  the 
idea  of  "both." 

This  view  of  the  individual  and  of  the  relation  of  men  to 
one  another  is,  once  more,  in.  direct  antagonism  to  that  of  Mr. 
Bosanquet  and  Mr.  Bradle}'.  They  cannot,  as  we  saw,  assign 
individuality  to  man,  as  well  as  to  the  Absolute.  In  the  last 
resort,  he  is  a  finite  being  to  them.  His  individuality  must 
prove  to  be  a  phantom,  and  his  existence  phenomenal  only.  The 
indwelling  of  God  must  to  them  be  destructive  of  man's  per- 
sonality. When  taken  up  into  the  Absolute,  the  finite  being 
is  transmuted,  and  the  transmutation,  I  believe,  involves  the 
extinction  of  personality  or  independent  individuality.  But,  on 
the  view  I  have  tried  to  set  forth,  the  indwelling  of  God  con- 
stitutes the  personality;  for,  as  already  shown,  what  is  done  to 
his  world  by  the  individual  is  done  by  the  use  of  powers  which 
the  world  has  given  to  him.  By  his  immanence  in  man  God 
empowers  man.  The  constituent  elements  break  into  con- 
sciousness in  him,  and  are  focussed  in  his  self-consciousness.  In 
that  act  of  becoming  self-conscious  the  individual  gathers  him- 
self together,  free  from  his  world,  in  order,  thereafter,  to  be 
free  in  and  by  means  of  his  world.  Except  on  these  terms 
I  do  not  see  how  both  the  immanence  of  God  and  the  freedom 
of  man,  or  how  both  religion  and  morality,  can  be  maintained. 

Now  the  conception  of  divine  immanence,  seriously  enter- 
tained, carries  with  it  a  further  consequence.  It  involves  the 
rejection  of  the  idea  of  God  as  perfect  in  the  sense  that  he  is 
unchangeable.  It  looks  obvious  that  what  is  perfect  cannot 
change  except  for  the  worse.  But  even  were  that  true,  it  does 
not  justify  us  in  saying  that  the  impossibility  of  change  or  its 
absence  is  either  a  feature  or  a  condition  of  perfection.  Change- 
lessness  may  be  a  ruinous  condition.  It  is  evidently  a  concep- 
tion that  is  totally  inapplicable  to  life  in  every  form  and  at 
every  stage.  Life  is  constant  self-re-creation.  We  are  in  some 
ways  and  in  some  degree  new  beings  ever}-  day,  for  the  past 
constantly  enters  into  us  and  becomes  a  part  of  us.  The  instant 
that  process  stops,  death  ensues:  death  is  the  stopping  of  a 
process.     But  it  is  also  the  substitution  of  another:    decay  sets 


A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES  277 

in.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  in  neither  the  world  of  dead  objects 
nor  in  the  world  of  living  beings  can  we  find  anything  but 
process.  The  whole  Universe  is  a  single  process;  and,  if  our 
conclusions  hold,  the  reality  at  the  heart  of  that  process,  which 
expresses  itself  in  it,  and  which  in  truth  it  is,  is  the  Absolute 
of  philosophy,  the  God  of  religion. 

It  does  not  seem  easy  to  justify  the  conception  of  the  Divine 
Being  as  moving  from  perfection  to  perfection.  Compared 
with  the  later  stage,  the  earlier  manifestly  comes  to  appear  to 
be  defective  and  imperfect.  A  movement  from  perfection  to 
perfection  looks  like  a  logical  impossibility.  Every  present, 
when  it  arrives,  seems  to  condemn  what  went  before  as  at  least 
a  partial  failure.  But,  at  stage  A,  may  not  a  be  perfection; 
and  at  stage  B  may  not  b  acquire  that  character?  Is  it  quite 
certain  that  there  are  static  limits  to  the  indwelling  perfec- 
tions of  the  divine  nature,  or  indeed  to  anything  that  develops? 
What  is  admirable  in  a  grown-up  man  can  be  repellent  in  a 
child.  We  value  events  often  on  the  ground  that  they  are 
timely:  the  fact  is  there  to  meet  the  need.  Besides,  may  not 
the  process  once  more,  rather  than  either  of  the  stages,  be  the 
true  object  of  judgment,  and  the  divine  mode  of  existence? 
God  himself  may  have  in  his  power  no  better  way  than  to  sus- 
tain the  process  by  which  goodness  is  achieved. 

To  me  the  idea  of  God  as  the  perfect  in  process,  as  a  move- 
ment from  splendour  to  splendour  in  the  spiritual  world,  as 
an  eternal  achievement  and  never-resting  realization  of  the 
ideals  of  goodness  in  human  history,  is  endlessly  more  attrac- 
tive and,  I  believe,  more  consistent  with  our  experience  in  the 
present  w^orld  than  the  idea  of  a  Divine  Being  who  sits  aloof 
from  the  world-process,  eternally  contemplating  his  own  per- 
fections. Love,  at  any  rate,  is  directly  and  finally  inconsistent 
with  such  an  aloofness.  And  the  religion  of  Love,  which 
Christianity  is,  undoubtedly  identifies  the  destiny  of  God  and 
man:  God  sufiFers  in  our  sufferings,  and  rejoices  in  our  joys. 
He  is  our  Father;  and  he  moves  with  us,  because  he  moves 
in  us. 

There  is  one  more  consequence  which  follows  from  the  fun- 


278  A  FAITH  THAT  ENQUIRES 

damental  assumption  on  which  our  whole  course  rests.  I  shall 
merely  indicate  it.  It  is  the  view  which,  for  the  first  time,  we 
are  enabled  to  entertain  of  the  world  as  friendly  and  helpful, 
and  of  God  as  an  inspiring,  and  empowering,  and  guiding  pres- 
ence. It  is  the  view  which  we  advocate  that,  for  the  first  time, 
recognizes  the  friendliness  and  helpfulness  of  man's  environ- 
ment, and  apprehends  the  inspiration  and  power  which  the  rec- 
ognition of  God  as  dwelling  in  us  and  active  in  our  deeds 
brings.  These  forces  were  there  always;  but  the  ordinary 
theory  hid  them  from  our  sight.  Now  we  can  rejoice  in  a 
morality  that  is  positive  and  triumphant;  in  a  religion  that 
breaks  into  this  joyous  morality ;  and,  above  all,  in  the  knowl- 
edge that  God  is  with  us,  and  that,  therefore,  nothing  can  be 
finally  against  us. 

We  have,  in  this  course,  so  far  as  I  am  able  to  judge,  fol- 
lowed the  methods  of  science  and  admitted  nothing  which  did 
not  recommend  itself  to,  and  stand  the  tests  of,  an  enquiring 
intelligence.  And  it  is  no  small  matter  that  the  use  of  the 
methods  of  science,  if  strict  and  unsparing,  can  thus  support  a 
rational  religious  faith. 

Were  men  strengthened  and  sustained  by  such  a  faith,  it 
seems  to  me  that  Browning's  words  would  have  a  wide  appli- 
cation. Many  an  unobtrusively  modest,  religious  man  could 
describe  himself  as 

"One  who  never  turned  his  back  but  marched  breast-forward, 
Never  doubted  clouds  would  break,    , 

Never  dreamed,  though   right  were  worsted,  wrong  would  triumph, 
Held  we  fall  to  rise,  are  baffled  to  fight  better, 
Sleep  to  wake."  * 

^Asolando. 


Date  Due 

0  12-37 

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012  01008  5258 


